4th of July Salem, MA, 2010

As always the 4th of July celebration was great and the warm weather made it even more enjoyable (maybe a little bit hot during the middle of the day).  We enjoyed all of the festivities that are again only a few hundred yards away from our house.

Life is good and full of abundance.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

You might think for yourself that this is not the case for you.  Maybe you are right.  But the money fog sneaks up on you and suddenly everything is dark.

One thing that comes with a new year is taxes.  We have to prepare our taxes, which means that we will have to look at our money.  Some people dread this time of the year.  They think it is too painful to look at their money situation.  To them, ignorance is bliss.  That reminds me of a woman I talked to last summer.  She hadn’t done her taxes, because she feared that she owed the IRS money.  When talking to her it was obvious that she was in a money fog.  She had no idea about her money, what she was earning and spending.  Her rationalization was that it was better not knowing, even after acknowledging all the fear and anxiety she was suffering from.  She was constantly saying that she couldn’t afford this and that, and there was anger in her voice as she was talking about her situation.

Finally she did her taxes, grudgingly.  When I talked to her afterwards, she told me she got money back from the IRS.  After all of these months of being afraid and suffering from anxiety, she got money back from the IRS.  She had been staying in the fog regarding her money, causing her to feel miserable for no reason at all.  When I asked her about that, she looked at me, as there was something wrong with me.  Her fog was so thick and dark that even after getting money back from the IRS, she still was staying in the fog.

When I thought about it afterwards it came to me that being in this fog and feeling afraid about her money situation was normal for her.  It didn’t even occur to her that things could be different.

How are you with money?  Are you lost in the fog and can’t find your way out of it?  What is it costing you to stay in the fog?  It is difficult to find your way to abundance when you are lost in the fog and don’t know where you are or where you are going.  Take this opportunity to get out of the fog and make this year the one when you know where you are and where you are going.  Put yourself on the path to a Life of Abundance.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

Even though quitting smoking and healthy living, like dieting and exercise, are the most popular resolutions or lifestyle decisions for the New Year, changing their money situation is something many underearners plan on doing.  They all have different ideas about how to accomplish that.  Often it has to do with keeping track of every cent they spend, not to overdraw their checking account and so on.  Then there are those who are not going to let money ruin any more years of their lives and simply ignore money all together, with the mindset that it will all work itself out somehow.

Tackling the money problem is not easy, especially if you don’t change the way you view money.  Having a love/hate relationship with money, where the hate is the dominating factor, is not going to be very helpful.  Having negative feelings towards someone never results in a good relationship.  I know that I would never like to stay with someone who had very negative feelings towards me.  So it is no wonder money doesn’t stay.  Would you?  The the important part in getting out of this vicious cycle of underearning is to change your view of money.  Then you can start moving toward a Life of Abundance in the New Year.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

Well it was worse when the first Thanksgiving happened.  Even though the pilgrims’ first year had been good the second one was not so good.  On top of that they had to share food with newcomers, which resulted in food shortage.  During the 3rd year there was a drought in New England, which start in the spring and resulted in crops dying in the field.  It didn’t rain until fall.  To celebrate the return of the rain the governor proclaimed a day of thanksgiving on November 29th.  Even though they hadn’t solved their food shortage they still could give thanks for the good things that were happening in their lives.

So what are you thankful for this season?

In my home we are thankful for the good people around us that give us so much joy.  We are grateful for all the opportunities we have and we are grateful for each other.  I could keep on and on, but what about you?  What are you grateful for?

Being grateful helps us live a Life of Abundance.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

How do I use my time?  Do I really have to spend all that time reading emails?  Many people complain about emails and the quantity of emails they get.  There have been many advices given to deal with emails.  What has worked for me, are a few simple tricks.

I am very selective on what emails I read and delete those that I do not read.  A lot of the emails I get are not something I am interested in.   I unsubscribe from lists that I am not very interested in and I don’t find very beneficial.   Another trick came from Julia Morgenstern.  She suggests that you do not make it your first task in the morning to answer emails.  Start the day with something you know is productive and beneficial.  The email can wait.  If we have an appointment, we cannot do emails.  How about making an appointment with yourself every morning before you open email?

Just these very few and simple tricks freed up surprising time and has improved my productivity.   Every little thing can help you live a life of abundance.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

There is a claim that there is a recession going on in the world.  People are not buying as they used to do.  Was Christmas ruined because of this?

For me Christmas was wonderful.  It was not because of the presents.  My husband and me were trying to figure out what we wanted for Christmas.  It took us a long time to come up with something.  What we found was that we had what we really wanted and didn’t need more.  Of course there are things that we wouldn’t mind having, but they are not important and are not necessary for us to be happy.  We are happy in our lives and there is an abundance of love and care.

When we look back over last year we are thankful for our fortunes to get to know and work with people who have brought us much joy and peace.  With all that is happening with the economy in the world we are thankful for our abundance.

When I listen to the stories of how bad things are, I remind my self that it is all relative.  Over Thanksgiving I went to Iceland to see family.  I visited my aunt a lot and she reminisced about the past, when she was a little girl.  During one visit she talked about the time their house burned down and they had to move into a shed.  They got help from the neighbors to make it habitable, but it was not made bigger.  She mentioned that when she came back as an old woman she was surprised to see how small the shed had been.  In her memories it had been good place to live.  Many good memories had been created in this shed.  These memories followed her in her lives journey.  My husband and I are experiencing the beauty and the wealth of creating this kind of a life.  Life filled with happiness and abundance.

Wall Street is still suffering form fear.  Fear of everything going down further, which makes is it go down even further.  SURPRISE!

Fear is something underearners know well.  It is the fear of not earning enough.  Fear of being fired.  Fear of not finding another job.  Fear of changing jobs.  The fear is a very controlling emotion.  When we give into fear it has us by the throat.  Somehow it is very difficult to stop the fear.

What does fear do for us?

Are our lives better when we live in the state of fear?  My answer to that is NO.  My life is not better.  Fear lowers my quality of life.  My body is tenser.  My energy is stuck in the fear mode so I get tiered more easily.  There is less energy to do the things that give me pleasure and restores my energy.

It is easy to get trapped in the fear mode.  It doesn’t seem so bad.  Often we think we are protecting ourselves from something worse.  The fear of going from bad to worse is very powerful.

The problem is that in the state of fear our brain is protecting status quo.  We are not looking at how we can enjoy life more.  Our mind is not marveling in our glory.  Or thinking up new and better solutions.

How can we get away from the fear?

Fear has controlled my life in many ways.  To learn how to take control I have read a lot and talked with many people.  The solutions can be very complex or very simple.  From all the advice this is what I have come up with and it works well for me.   Three simple steps.

1. Notice the fear

Starting to notice how our body and our mind respond to fear.  There are physical symptoms.  For me the shoulders go down.  Somehow I get smaller.  My mind starts to focus on issues without coming up with solutions.

2. Take deep breaths

What we tell our body to do is easier to do than deal with our mind.  It is an old trick to focus on the breathing, and the results are amazing.  I find that for me the focusing on my breathing takes precedent over all other thoughts.

3. Give thanks

Giving thanks for what we have and what we are about to receive.  It can be hard for some people to give thanks.  How can I give thanks when everything is going down the drain?  I find that it doesn’t have to be a big thing.  I am breathing, I give thanks for that.  I can walk and thank a higher power for that.  And so on.  It is amazing that when I start, more things come to me.  My mind opens up.  Opens the mind up to receive, and I give thanks for that.  It all opens me up to abundance.

With only these three simple steps I am able to open my heart and stand taller.  My mind becomes clearer and I have more energy to deal with what caused the fear.  I become more resourceful and I can realize that fear is only making things worse.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

Being under the heavy cloud of underearning is depressing and energy draining.  The world is difficult.  We often try some desperate means to battle it, often with dire results.  I know this too well, having spent a big part of my life under this dark and heavy cloud.

Now what is UNDEREARNING?

Mikelann Valterra, the founder of Women’s Earnings Institute, defines underearning as follows.

“Underearning happens when you repeatedly make less than you need or than would be helpful to you, usually despite your desire to make more money. Put another way, an underearner is someone who doesn’t get paid as much as might be expected, given her experience, education, training or results she obtains for her clients.”

Many of us have been there and many still are.  We think “If only …”, “Why not…” and all the other variations of that.  It feels like we can’t change our life.

GUESS WHAT?  WE CAN! We can actually change.  To change the results we get, we have to change how we do things.  Life of abundance is possible.  It requires us to make changes.  I know that from my own experience.  I used to be rather quiet, didn’t like to be noticed and went often into great lengths to keep the status quo.

By hiding from life I was hiding from money.  So, I made a decision to change.  Now, I work on being the authentic me.  I stopped hiding from money and started taking care of money.  Guess what, I found out that if I take care of money, then money takes care of me.

In this blog I will discuss these past practices of mine and that so many other underearning women have.  And I will also talk about what it takes to live a life, a life of abundance.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna