why our money mindset matters (we can't draw to ourselves more than we think we are worth) - part I

Prior to making stuff for a living, I worked in a bank.

I started as a bank teller with $100 in the bank and owed $100 on a Stern's (now Macy's) credit card and left 10 years later as a vice president with $10,000 in the bank and owed $10,000 on a Citibank credit card.

I was really good at helping other people make and save and grow their money, but for me - the money came in, the money went out.

Now I always had enough money (we did buy a house somewhere in there, took our daughter to Disney World a couple times, yada yada). Hubs and I never had to fight over money (which is one of the main things couples fight about and probably one of the reasons we are still together) although I had been known to remove a price tag or two (or twenty) in secret.

I thought I had good money karma/luck - the money always came in just before I needed it. But, I always needed it.

It didn't stick. 

(imagine duct tape covered with sweater lint here, but maybe not if you are eating your lunch)

Being sticky was not really on my radar. My money mindset was all about flow.

I saw money through two lenses - the lens of spirit; money as energy that needs to moving, no need to hold onto it, there is always enough for me and the lens of the bank where money comes in as deposits and moves out as loans and money is made on the difference in interest between deposits and loans and on the float.

(note - this isn't how banks make money now unfortunately, now things are a lot more risky)

I thought these lenses (is this the plural of lens - this looks so wrong) were working well for me until right around the time of my first Saturn Return - KABOOM. CRASH. JOB GONE.

Now this kaboom, crash thing that sounded like life as I knew it hitting the floor and felt like a tractor trailer to my ego wasn't really out of the blue at all. I knew I was burned out. I knew my astrology chart. I had been doing the Course in Miracles. I had been asking life to find the quickest path for me to get on about the business I was here for. I wanted to be happy. I knew I was doing exactly the kind of shit that changes things.

Once I lost my job I had no more money coming in, but I still had that pesky need to cover the money going out. 

I started manifesting on the outside what I had been creating on the inside for years by giving more than I was getting.

(note - when we request help or guidance from spirit it is not incorrect to imagine the Goddesses jumping about and shouting "Oh, YES, now we've got a project!")

Everything that happens is a reflection of what we believe about ourselves. We cannot draw to ourselves more than we think we are worth. We cannot outperform our level of self esteem.

I wasn't so much pissed that life kicked me in the ass as I was totally awed by the serendipity that created complete and total change. Actually, to be honest I was pissed, too.

(maybe I should rate this post R for Cat can't stop cursing today)

Technically I quit my job. In reality I signed a resignation letter human resources had prepared for me to sign in lieu of them firing me. I hired an employment lawyer and thought I would "sue the bastards" (I did rate this post R, remember). Then I unexpectedly ran into (more Goddess magic, no doubt) a woman who had been fired from the bank the year before. She was still angry and bitter and out of work. I didn't want that to be me. I un-hired the lawyer.

I also knew that this change was created by me. Even if it looked like "they did me wrong" to the outside world.

At the time I blamed burn out (and there was truth to that), but greater forces were at play here.

I was about to step into a new position within the bank that was highly visible. I had been promoted many times and always done well; leaning in to new positions, doing what had to be done, yada, yada - been there done that.

I had always worked with wealthy people. I had always worked for them in a service position though, even as a bank manager. This new position involved playing golf and having dinner with very wealthy clients, schmoozing them (can anyone really imagine me schmoozing) and becoming a peer to the bank's most senior management. When they looked at me they saw a peer because they were only seeing my outside. My inside was just a poor girl from the sticks in New Jersey. My inside didn't match my outside anymore. Something had to give.

For this promotion I would have had to outperform my own level of self esteem, which is something I now believe is just not possible.

Most people at this point get sick or self sabotage. It doesn't look like these things are conscious creations because we do this stuff unconsciously - we literally have to, we can't live with the split.

Monica Lewinsky didn't destroy Bill Clinton's reputation - his being required to outperform his self esteem did.

Self sabotage is a tricky beast because it doesn't always show up right away and it's not always easy to see the connection between what we think we want (that our self esteem is not lining up with) and the actions we are taking. A lot of people self sabotage themselves right now with the self defeating behavior of internet surfing (looking here, there and everywhere and never getting anything done). The lack of motivation and focus that are often at the center of depression have their roots in our self esteem, too (depression is the shadow side of creation, so listen up makers).

There are actionable things I have done for this (and continue to do, life is a process and I definitely don't have it all figured out) that work for me - they include forgiveness exercises, EFT, money releases, changing money habits, boundaries, the "who do we think we are stuff", astrology and more - so next post actionable stuff we can do to get our inner self to line up with the outer self we are reaching for.

(note - doing the exercises changes the outer self, too - sometimes the things we think we want are not really the stuff we are wanting)

next up Part II why our money mindset matters - taking action to increase our self worth so we draw the stuff we want to line up with (and Part III will tie this back into our businesses and why needing money is a good thing for makers)

A Full Moon in Virgo on Sunday - a good one for Butchers and Bakers and CandleStick Makers

Full Moon in Virgo on Sunday! This is the culmination of September's Virgo new moon.

With Virgo we have the archetype that holds the energy of "here is what I should be, here is what I could be and here is what I would look like if I got everything right" with the simultaneous thought "here is who I actually am" (warts and all, not that Virgos have warts, of course).

This tension of what is real and what is ideal is the fundamental tension of the Virgo archetype. 

Traditionally Virgo is the sign of the servant and healer. Virgo is also the skilled craftsperson - the archetype of being good at something, of taking the time to learn and do something well.

(when Martha says "it's a good thing" she is channeling her inner Virgo, which is probably her sun sign or sits in Venus, have to look her up)

So in Virgo we gain dignity and self respect from being good at something that is useful to other people.

If you were born with your sun in Virgo this is the basic way you process life, moon in Virgo; the basic way you experience your feelings about life and if your ascendant is in Virgo; the basic way you appear to others - the mask you wear.

(people who think Virgos are fussy or nitpicky are totally missing the point and also forgetting we all have Virgo in our charts - the Virgo message of things worth doing being worth doing well and the value of these things lying within their value to others is probably the exact paradigm that will get everyone who is out of work back to work now - it is no coincidence Virgo rules the 6th house of work and health)

The Virgo full moon reminds us that we will find right work. This right work may not be something we will be paid to do. It's not about the money. 

This is about being good at something that is valuable to other people.

It's not about having other people recognize our value - Virgo is the leg of our hero's journey that comes after Leo where we took center stage and got our applause. Virgo is the space where we release, at least a little bit, our need to be recognized. 

*I read in the Harvard Review this week that what women want from work is social respect and what men want is complex challenges. It made me furious  to realize this sexist blubber fit hubs and I exactly. I wanted to throw up and to run screaming into the night - I am just waiting for Sunday's full moon.*

At the time of the Virgo Full Moon we have this "how it is" vs "how it could be" itchiness manifest for all of us.

This is a very grounded full moon (even with our watery Pisces sun) and we are able to manifest the work and health stuff we have been working on more fully.

The full moon isn't a culmination moon exactly, although it does often bring the curtain down on some act in our story or open the door fully so we can see our next step. Think back to our Virgo New Moon intentions from September. It's a great time to take a big step toward something - the full moon reflects plenty of Pisces sun to light up our paths and will be supportive to physical action.

Lots of craziness and stress ahead in April- so enjoy this weekend. Time to howl peeps! xo all

why it's easier to build a business when you need the money, but not when you REALLY need the money

When I was in banking the banks in my county would bid annually on the county's surrogate account money. This was money the surrogate court was holding for people who had inheritances, lawsuits, winnings, etc when the money had to be held in trust for them for some reason.

One year we won the bidding war and our bank got to invest this money, which was tens of millions of dollars, and my branch got to open and service these accounts.

We quickly noticed no matter how much investment advice and money counseling we offered the people who were receiving regular payouts from inheritances and lawsuits, they (I don't mean anyone with mental or physical disabilities here) often did not make a move to move on with their lives until their money was completely gone.

Faced with monthly statements showing their declining balances, people still had to be dead broke with the sheriff holding an eviction notice at the front door before they could wake up to the fact these payments were over. It was time to get a job.

This isn't about laziness. Sometimes we need our backs against the wall so we have something to push off against.

It works the same when we are building a business. It is hard to build a business we will care about if we do not need money because every business requires us to do stuff we don't want to do.

But it is even harder to build a business if we REALLY need the money because our decisions will be skewed by the money - it's too easy to lose track of the fact our business has to be about the value we bring to other people before that value comes back to us in the form of dollar signs in our bank account.

So, I'm going to start a new series about money and our businesses next week.

And I will be back tomorrow with my take on the Virgo Full Moon we get to experience this weekend. xo all

5 ways to create more good for ourselves - tying this stuff into our business

I think people and situations come to us to play out in front of us the energy we are carrying. We can literally look at everything in our lives as manifesting the energies we carry. 

We carry this energy through our beliefs.

Changing our beliefs is at the root of changing how things are working in our life.

This is how good stuff takes us to more good stuff and bad stuff can lead us quickly to everything falling apart.

(especially if we have spent many years and probably many lifetimes creating keyholes for the belief that creates the emotion that feels "I am not safe" - this is the real meaning of karma - the reaping what we sow and repeating what we sow labeling of a feeling) 

This is why affirmations work for some people but not others. Speaking positive words and writing positive words and hearing positive words changes the space we occupy. But we can move out of that space very quickly

(think about how we can be in a great mood and then someone cuts us off in traffic and we get mad, instantly - unconsciously flashing to all the other times in our life where someone has gotten ahead of us or been faster than us or something has just come out of nowhere and put us in our place)

if that space does not line up with our beliefs.

I know makers who have literally put themselves out of business by following the advice to double their prices. Not because this is bad advice (although sometimes it is) and not because there aren't customers for their new price range but because they themselves didn't line up with their new prices!

(and I am not saying that people who make and sell more expensive items have different beliefs than people who sell inexpensive items, but if the earring fits ... )

So, to create more good for ourselves we are 1. telling our stories in the best way possible, 2. focusing on how we want to feel, 3. meditating and 4. celebrating - how does this stuff look within our business?

#1. We stop comparing our work to anyone else's work - we stop comparing our business to anyone else's business. There is not a competition going on here (and we would be comparing our inside to someone else's outside anyway).

We are all here for different things (and none of us are here to make jewelry or sweaters, trust me) - we have all been through different things - we all have different ways of looking at the world.

And the world we are seeing is manifested just for us based on the energy we are carrying.

I see the world through the lens of mythology. There was no way I would have ever given my mother the satisfaction of saying I Love Jesus, but I would have felt perfectly comfortable making her perfectly uncomfortable by talking about Athena and Lilith.

Myth is social instruction. It's story that gets handed down through the generations to teach us how to be good members of the collective. So, it's about teaching people how to behave or not behave which is why although I embrace it, I am also a little suspicious of it, too ...

(I have found the archetypes based on the myths to be as real as rain though)

We don't complain about customers, ever. It is really weird to me when people go on Facebook and complain about their customers. People who do this all the time are not doing themselves any favors. They will just be attracting, through their attention to these stories, more and more of these problem customers right into their businesses.

For the rest of us, they are doing us a favor because we get to feel how much we appreciate our own customers.

All business owners see the truth of this - we have all had that problem customer situation where everything goes wrong - first something happens and we ship late, then we realize something is wrong with what we have shipped, so we email the customer to explain and we call them Shirley instead of Susan. Ouch.

Everything goes from bad to worse. 

No doubt the customer is late ordering for the birthday of someone they don't even want to shop for - this energy lines up with our distracted energy, even if we have had 100 perfect transactions that day that didn't, and we have a catastrophe in the making. Of course, if we eventually handle this situation well, that extreme energy will flip to the other extreme and the customer will become a loyal buyer for life.

The key is to be languaging any problem as a problem situation never as a problem customer.

We are not dealing with a problem customer, since there is no such thing, just a problem situation or even better a challenging situation. This way of thinking makes all the difference to the final outcome.

We tell the best stories about our business. If we can't tell good stories- we just shut up.

#2  We focus on the feel good emotions. We make a list of how we want our business to make us feel - why are we doing this thing we are doing?

Our list might include : proud, organized, responsible, independent, creative, collaborative, abundant, etc.

We read this list everyday focusing on feeling the emotion - we can just make stuff up that we need to in order to feel these emotions - studies show our brains can't tell the difference.

#3. We meditate. If we go to the post office and find - surprise, surprise - there is no line and we are in and out - close your eyes in the car and sit for 10 minutes. Waiting for our modgepodge to dry? Good time to meditate. Downloading a report, printing labels, about to make an important phone call - tell your brain "I'm not going to need you for a few minutes, my friend" and shut it down.

#4. Celebrate the good stuff - don't wait for the good stuff to happen. This is about being, not doing. Celebrate the good stuff that is coming and the good stuff we already have. Last night I celebrated my bills.

(yes, those things I used to toss on the backseat of my car and forget to pay)

I celebrated life's belief in my future earning ability. I celebrated my ability to stay open to new avenues and new ideas for abundance. I celebrated the business I have built here based on my collaboration with the companies I am now paying.

I wrote the checks with my favorite pen, used the magical new Harry Potter stamps

(yes, I request my post office order me the special stamps collectors get and then I use them)

thanked the electric company for my lights and the cable company for my beloved internet and celebrated with a vanilla soy candle and 2 episodes of Downton Abbey.

I have some astrological happening to post about - hopefully I will get that post up before the weekend. xo all