Gift of Wealth

According to business woman Loral Langemeier, who regularly builds millionaires, many people are convinced having a lot of money is beyond their reach.  Does this sound a lot like you?  In her best-selling book Millionaire Maker (2006), she explains how you can develop the kinds of financial insights that wealthy people use to maintain and/or build their fortunes.  She developed a wealth cycle process to teach anyone that living without financial concerns is possible.  Her life experience evolved after growing up herself on a traditional Nebraskan farm.  Consider this:

1) Believe you have to give in order to get.  In this life, nothing comes from nothing.  People who are financially well-off typically work hard to earn what they have or, must at least work hard to keep or grow their asset base.  If you simply aim to hoard and don't desire to share what you get, then you'll close yourself off from opportunities to develop yourself and your fortune.  To understand the universal balance is to grasp giving resonates outward and reflects back at you.

2) Accept you already possess key tools.  Reading can introduce you to new strategies yet, the fundamental belief that reaching your goal is possible will initially make or break you.  Thinking like wealthy people can be useful, but modeling yourself after them, showing initiative and being willing to learn, is more far-reaching.  To move ahead with hope and optimism is essential.    

3) Recognize wealth concerns information access.  Lessons learned send powerful messages.  To know where and how to access the experiences that will help you is exactly what you need.  Loral has strategies that can be applied by anyone in debt, on low income or, even people living a great lifestyle on very little.  Learn more about why you are where you are and what it will take to get your money-building ventures in forward motion.  This goes beyond building your net worth to develop your know-how about consistent cash flow. What do you really want?

4) Grasp wealth is generated by a team not an individual.  Mentoring is used to develop sucessful investors.  Her team-made millionaire community involves, for instance, a construction manager with a 12 million dollar goal within 2 years, a telecom tech who became a millionaire within 9 months through 'bread-and-butter' real estate, and a law firm receptionist on entry level salary who began a dog walking venture and became a millionaire in a few years.  People come from all walks of life and financial backgrounds. Tap into leadership, teamwork and gain new insight into new financial ways of thinking. 

5) Take the mystery out of wealth-building.  Many ways exist to earn money.  Learn more why money generating assets will build your cashflow and create more wealth.  Learn ways to create passive income streams so your money is working for you as you're living.  Assets can be used to create more assets.  This isn't realistic if you don't grasp your money situation.  Empower yourself to learn details. Reach out for clearer financial decisions. Make new plans.   

Bedrock of the soul

Each time you attribute blame, you do not see bad people are illusions, and less-than-desirable choices you made lead to where you are and the insight you now have. All of this is a clue to how you are gradually reconnecting with the bedrock of soul, or your true self that never leaves you.

Absolute rights or wrongs may not exist. Decisions are made out of love and in response to fear. The latter often leads to trouble. Yet, to make choices in response to love raises awareness about yourself. Why would you choose to believe other people are responsible for choices that don't work out for you? What reasons would you have to take action if you will only ever feel a victim of circumstance and of nasty people? You would likely sense no reason to feel motivated at all.

The bedrock of your soul is the free will to interpret life as you choose. You create and perceive the reality and determine whether it feels good or bad for you. Each situation offers clues to potential benefits, to potential ways you could sharpen your understanding or otherwise gain. This is a new phase in your self-growth.

What if you suddenly became so solution-oriented that you no longer recognized situations as problematic? What if you began to understand that you have all the tools at your disposal to satisfy your needs? Although challenges can promote growth, peace of mind about your identity and motivation would further increase and expand on your growth.

As times passes, you will sense which steps or course of action will satisfy you. What energizes you now? Why might you begin to feel empowered? All that matters is what you experience and what you retain from each experience. At times, your beliefs and desires may be at odds. In efforts to reconcile them, you'll get-to-know parts of yourself and realize what is truly necessary to build on what you know or understand.

Eckhart Tolle & 10 Ways to change the world through yourself

According to Eckhart Tolle, the human mind craves not only food for thought, but clues to its identity, or sense of self. Life is like an onion where you peel away the layers of skin to discover what you've been hiding from yourself.  Your ego emerges and continuously re-creates itself. Your mind interprets the world to make sense of who you are. To do so, you're often conditioned by the past and seek to find fulfillment in future. Tolle urges us to recognize The Power of Now :

1) Explore your fear. When thoughts capture your full attention, it means you identify with the voice in your head. Thought guides your sense of self. This is the ego. That mentally-constructed self that ells you it feels incomplete and precarious. That’s why fear and want are predominant emotions and motivating forces. Why do you really allow yourself to experience dissatisfaction?

2) Inner voices aren't the whole truth. As you recognize a voice in your head pretends to be you and speaks constantly, you move away from unconscious acceptance of this mindset. When you notice that voice, you realize who you are is not the voice (the thinker) but the listener, the one who is aware. Knowing yourself as the awareness behind the voice is the key to your freedom.

3) Stop seeking. Your ego pursuades you to seek, aspire for more things to make itself feel more complete.  Why does it seem insatiable? This explains the ego’s compulsive preoccupation with future. If you slowly become aware of yourself "living for the next moment," you learn to step out of that pattern.  You choose to devote your full attention to this moment.

4) Recognize there's more to it. When you live through the ego, you always view the present moment to a means to an end. You live for the future, and when you achieve your goals, they, like pleasure, end quickly and don’t satisfy you.   As you give more attention to the doing than to the future result you aim to achieve through it, you redefine your old conditioning. Your efforts exerted become not only more effective, but infinitely more fulfilling and joyful without end.

5) Step outside your prison.  Even if your grievances seem "justified," you have created an identity for yourself like a prison whose bars grow out of your thoughts.  Note what you do to yourself, how your mind brainwashes you. Feel the emotional attachment you have to your victim story. Be aware of the compulsion to think or talk about it. Witness your inner state. You don’t have to do anything. With awareness comes transformation and freedom. Rather than practicing self-loathing and criticism, express self-love and acceptance to break through the bars.

6) Eliminate the inner judge. Complaining and wallowing are some of the ego's favorite mind patterns. They strengthen ego and feul a negative fire.  By doing this, you judge others or a situation "wrong" and yourself "right." Through being "right," you feel superior, and through feeling superior, you strengthen a sense of self. In reality, you only strengthen the illusion of ego. Can you observe patterns within and recognize the complaining voice in your head for what it is? In your dealings with people, can you detect subtle feelings of either superiority or inferiority?

7) Resist comparison. Envy is a by-product of the ego.  It may grow if good things happen for others, or someone has more, knows more, or can do more than you. The ego’s identity depends on comparison and feeds on more.  It grasps at anything.  If all else fails, you strengthen your fictitious sense of self through seeing yourself as more unfairly treated by life, more ill or worse off than others. Describe stories.  What are fictions from which you derive your sense of self?

8) Recognize addictions to patterns. The ego desiresconflict with something or someone. That explains why you seek peace and joy and love, but may not experience or tolerate them for long. You say you want happiness, but may be obsessed with unhappiness and reasons to change. Your unhappiness ultimately arises not from life conditions, but from the conditioning of your mind.

9) See through guilt. This is another attempt by the ego to create an identity, a sense of self. The ego doesn’t care whether that self is positive or negative. What you did or failed to do is a manifestation of unconsciousness. You personalize it.  Giving into ego will not free yourself from the ties that bind, enhance yourself or, your sense of importance. Even if you achieve a clearer identity, it won’t satisfy. What can you do to circumvent guilt or nip it in the bud?

10) Rethink goals. Understand that the achieving any aim is less important than your impetus led you to think. Experience in this moment is not a means to an end. Its the doing that is fulfilling in itself every moment.  Incremental goals may have high value individually, not part of big whole. 

Reshape your comfort zone

What is it about people telling you, your dream niche is out there!? How many people do you know who regularly stop what their doing just long enough to reframe things? Maybe far fewer than could benefit from such a process.  If reviewing your life, validating it, and finding reasons for self respect are part of your past, what may have changed all that? The opposite feelings.  If you feel locked inside an unchanging reality or, crave new sources of stimulation, consider these ideas:

1) Rekindle your childhood or adolescence.  When you were younger, you spoke about things ou hoped to do.  You may have written a diary or journal. Refer back to your writing and possibly also friends from this point of your life.  Jog your memory and jumpstart your soul journey.

2) Step back from your latest routine.  If you don't have a particular project in mind to tackle just yet, it would be useful to integrate change into regular routines.  Take time to brainstorm and test out new things.  Attend a local club meeting as a guest or a trial with no obligations.  Feeling the waters implies a willingness to admit what you do now is no longer working.  Your options branch from there.

3) Bridge the gap.Your next venture or creative pursuit can bridge your personal and professional interests if this appeals to you.  You could initiate a group undertaking at the office after hours or find a common interest among friends and launch a shared venture. 

4) Think and live outside-the-box.  What society tells you makes sense won't necessarily be the same thing that makes sense to you.  Its okay to make choices that are uncommon or don't seem to jive with the status quo.  There's no reason you can't combine seemingingly incompatible roles or pursuits.  After all, you're the only person who really defines what's right for you as you are at this moment.

5) Retire dead-end chapters. We all have them: periods of our lives which cease to appeal or motivate us.  We may outgrow activities, relationships, goals and feel reluctant to give them up out of habit.  The idea of admitting a style, behavior or mindset no longer suits you simply means its time to adopt something new.  This process can be part of a healthy life phase transition.  Shed that old skin.  Molt.

6) Embrace uncertainty.  Evolve to make changes that enable you to feel good about yourself.  You will never be able to predict everything, but you can prepare yourself for the positive things awaiting you around the corner.  To choose to explore interests indicates you're ready to grow.

7) Tap into your skills & talents. People rarely feel they use all their talents and skills.  How well-acquainted are you with your own?  What have you been postponing that you could offer as a gift to others? Learning to tap into underused or undiscovered talents can transform your life.  This is also an opportunity to get-to-know yourself better. How you have evolved in your life until now?

Value your flaws

Although each experience may take a certain toll, each moment is also another opportunity to become better acquainted with your flaws.  Do you fidget in your chair just thinking about it? Or, are you anxious about the opportunity to learn to do the best you can with all that you are?  Some people struggle to identify personal flaws and other people can't detach themselves from them.

Its possible you sense one of your flaws could be chronic restlessness.  You know, the kind that makes it difficult to appreciate where you are when you're there because your mind is already focused on where you're heading.  What about those blessing staring right at you in the face?  This flaw may be characteristic of many people in modern places.  Perhaps part of you seeks to make up for a relative's mistakes or, to live up to someone else's expectations? What did they teach you about flaws?

At some point, its within your reach to attain self-acceptance. This entails not only getting-to-know your traits, strengths and weaknesses, but also coming to recognize your limits and ultimately, your mortality.  The idea of valuing your flaws doesn't suggest you should ignore or disregad them.  Yet, it doesn't invite you to dwell on them incessantly or self-criticize either.  What does it entail to you now?

The whole notion of valuing your flaws is like an invitation to get-to-know pitfalls so you don't fall into them or, at least don't fall into the same ones repeatedly.  Why would it be desirable not to become too hungry to please? Too complacent to notice details? Too fearful to take chances that would lead to meaningful experiences?  Each perceived flaw is an opportunity to learn and share wisdom.  What have you done and why? Keeping a journal will help track 'the good, bad and the ugly'.