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

Is it the economy or the fear of becoming a bag lady?  Is it the fear that no one will love you and don’t want to take care of you?

For so many of us it is the fear of ending up on the street.  It is the fear of not being able to take care of our self and our family.  It is actually the fear of failure, the fear of your inadequacy and living in darkness.

Marianne Williamson in her book “Return of Love” offer a different perspective.  There she says: “It is our light not the darkness that frightens us the most.”  It is our fear of how powerful we are, the fear of what happens when we do NOT play small.  We are afraid of what happens when we allow ourselves to be and do what we are meant to be and do.  As Marianne Williamson says: “There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so other people won’t feel insecure around you.”  Yes, who am I to play small and to shrink so other people feel secure around me.

Having done that for most of my life, where has it gotten me?  It has made my world so much smaller.  I am playing in only a corner of the world, dark corner.  How come I am in the darkness?  It feels safe, secure.  Where are all the people that I worked so hard on trying to make them feel secure around me?  They are not any where around me now.  They have moved on.  It is now up do me to open up my world and dare to step into the light.  It is horrendously scary to be in the light and be the powerful woman I was meant to be.  What I have accomplished when I stay in that mindset is many times more than being in the dark.  It can be scary to see what gets done when you stay in the light.  It takes courage to be there.  I have to remember that this is who I am and it is in the light that I become stronger.

It is by staying in the light, allowing myself to grow and become stronger, that I can live a life of abundance.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

These days everybody is wondering if the economy has hit bottom?

It all depends on how you look at it.  There are some signs that things are improving and it is hard to imagine anything lower than witnessing one of the biggest companies in the world going bankrupt.  Yes, everything is pointing to GM going into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on June 1^st.  I don’t think anybody would have expected this giant to go under if you had asked him or her a year ago, but it is happening.

As the financial world is tumbling down around us the question is how is your financial situation?  Is the fear having better of you?  If a giant like GM is failing what does that say about you?  Not much I say.  They dug their own grave with their decisions.  The only question you have to ask is have you been digging yours?  Where are you with your finances?  What are you doing to help yourself?  There are so many things that we can do to help ourselves.  The first thing is to acknowledge that we do make mistakes.  The quicker we are able to learn from our mistakes the faster we recover.  We are not like GM, we have the ability to adjust fast is much greater.

The economy always improves again, or like my 95-year-old aunts says: “You just hang in there and it comes back.”  She should know having lived through the rollercoaster of the Icelandic economy.  With all the economical ups and downs she has had in her life, including a depression, world war and oil crisis, and personal downs, she is living a life of abundance.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

Oh, you think things will be all better when the economy turns around.  That it will be better in the future.

This is a very common thought pattern with underearners.  Something or someone will make all things better.  I know this inside out.  Having lived like this for most of my life.  Do you know what I found out?  To my surprise and horror, it doesn’t work like that.

Well, actually someone will make things better, and that someone is I.  Yes, I am the one that will make it better.  It is amazing to think that I am that powerful.  But I am!  I am the best person for ME to change my life.  It is I that am having the underearning beliefs and I who am behaving accordingly.

For me it was and is even today a scary thought.  This power belongs to me.  By accepting this power, and taking actions to change my behavior, things change.

In today’s world this means I will not wait for the economy to improve.  I will take the steps to leave underearning behind.  Life is simply too good to waste on waiting.  I have a life of abundance ahead of me.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

I have been reading Sonja Lyubomirsky’s book “The How of Happiness”.  A relevant topic in the times we are living.  The day after I wrote the blog about “perseverance” I read about optimism.  According to research, both hers and others, cultivating optimism is a good tool to be happy.  She says in book: “Optimism motivates us and leads us to take initiative.  Optimists don’t easily give up.”  How appropriate is that.  While the media is busy telling us how bad the economy is, we are busy changing our belief, to get paid what we are worth.  It is a radical shift and optimism is needed to succeed.

In the book Sonja teaches different activities to help us become happier.  Cultivating optimism is one of them.  For us, it is to know that we WILL BE PAID what we are worth.  To belief that we are worth it, and that we can do it despite all the doom and gloom in the media.  We might reposition us in the job market.  That could mean for some learning new skills or freshen up on old skills.  When we know we can do this the anxiety and the pessimism is left behind.  Sonja also talks in her book about how we are more resourceful when we have the pessimism out of our life.

Another thing is to look at the bright side and allow us to see a brighter future that is essential for us to keep moving along.  Knowing that we WILL have a brighter future.  This can be hard when the news media is as busy as it is telling us that the economy is going further and further down.  Therefore cultivating optimism is important.

I want to insert here that it is not an absolute that everybody is seeing his or her personal financial situation becoming worse.  Many people I know are having the most financially rewarding time ever.  These people are the ones that practice gratitude and optimism.  With persistence and perseverance they have been able to reap the benefits of their work.  They look at the bright side of life and enjoy.

How does anything else make us feel better?

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

We know all too well that the economy is changing.  It is changing fast and we are living it.  How can we expect to change our underearning patterns when the economy is so scary?  The instinct is to hunker down.

In my last blog I talked about persistence and the importance of being persistent in our effort to create a new habit.  Now I am going to talk about the other part that is also very important, perseverance.

The Oxford American Dictionaries’ first definition for “perseverance” is:

•  steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success: his perseverance with the technique illustrates his single-mindedness | medicine is a field, which requires dedication and perseverance.

How appropriate to have that as a motto in this economy.  We are leaving behind old beliefs and fill the vacuum with new beliefs that empower us in getting paid what we are worth.  The results might not come as quickly as we might hope for, but still we head on the path going forward.

The economy is what it is.  We have to adjust to the economy whether it is booming or shrinking.  It is interesting that so many underearners are not earning to their potential even in a booming economy.

What happens is that our belief controls more what we get than we realize.  Our mindset dictates our results.  That is why it is so important to move on with perseverance.  It might be difficult to achieve what we are striving for.  We will have a few delays on our way and encounter some difficulties.  For that reason it is even more important to stay on course in this economy.  The importance is even greater to leave behind the underearning.  There is only so much that hunkering down will help.  We must take the new belief that we deserve to be paid what we are worth and stick to it with perseverance.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

I just talked to a client about money and what she described as her problems with money and managing her money.  At the end of the talk she came to the conclusion that this was only a story that she was telling herself.  This story did not have much merit.

By telling herself this story she became powerless with money and afraid.  When she shifted her perspective she became more powerful and resourceful.  The fear was gone.  The economy is still in a bad shape, but she is not.  Instead of fear, the naturally resourceful woman stepped out of it, knowing that she could handle whatever would come her way.

It is amazing the power that our stories can have over us.  Our subconscious mind takes the stories we say as being the truth and does everything to make sure they are true.

I have tested this in a very simple way when I misplace things.  I used to berate myself for doing so and kept on about I couldn’t find anything.  One time I caught myself, stopped the old story and said “I always find it in the end”.  Then I looked around and found what I was looking for and in a place I had looked before.  Since then I have used this again and again, and always with the same results.

By changing the story I saved myself a lot of aggravation and time.  My subconscious mind was only fulfilling the order that I had given with my story.  That is what it does.  The same thing happens when we talk about how bad the economy is and so on.  The subconscious mind picks that up and points to all the things that support this view of the economical situation.

To change the story we have to change the story we tell.  Give the subconscious mind something good to work with and make it come true.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

When the market went tumbling down fear took over.  The news media focused on the downside.  As people talked about how bad the market was, how the economy was going down to new lows, fear came into people’s minds.  People’s minds were full of fear.  In all of this I noticed that my energy level went down with the economy.  Even people around me said the same thing.  Was it the economy that was dragging the energy down?  Or was it the fear that gobbled up the energy?  When I took a step back I saw a big monster that was feeding on our fear and the energy we were putting into the fear.

As the elections came closer the media focused on it and put its energy and resources to report on it.  The markets started going up slowly.  Where were we putting our energy?  Not in the fear monster.  Life was somewhat better.  The bowl of breakfast cereal is the same as before.  Was it helpful indulging in fear?  Did anything improve? No, we only let our energy be gobbled up by the fear monster.  What will be different if we focus on what is good and how we can feel better?  How about taking the energy and go out and run to build up our mind and body?  When we go to bed we can at least have a good night’s sleep.

As we all know the results of the election were historical and we will remember them forever.  Now that the energy around the elections has dissipated the focus is back on the economy.  Market is again spiraling down and the monster is back at the table feeding on fear.  Maybe we are living the prophecy, the self-fulfilling prophecy that is feed by fear.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

The House rejected the rescue plan!

A new plan has arrived and the Senate approved it.

There is a plan in the process and maybe the House will approve it.  Maybe it is a good one, or maybe not.

What can an underearner learn from this?  A plan is easy to make and to reject.  We often make plans and then just as quickly we change them.  What do we want to do and how?  What it comes down to, there is no plan at all.  We keep on doing the same old thing, because it is difficult to make a decision on what to do differently and stick to it.  We don’t want to have to do things differently.  All we want is things to turn out different. 

The reality is that nothing will change until we start to change.  We have to start to make a different choice and follow through with it.  Making the decision is easy compared to what follows.  First we have to come up with a plan. That plan has to spells out how we are going to do things differently.  What is going to be different now with this plan? The same old, same old, doesn’t work any more if we want different results.  The plan has to allow us to face the truth about our finances.  And it also has to allow us to take a different route.  This route has a final destination.

This sounds so easy, how come we haven’t done this.  The answer is; we humans are creatures of habit.  We do not like to do things different or do what we are used to do differently.  We like to do the same old thing and we want to get different results.

Is that maybe the reason that the House rejected the plan?  Was it too much the same old thing or was it too different?

To get different result we must do things differently.

The funny thing is that when we are down and have nowhere to go, then the situation becomes desperate enough for us to change.  There is no choice and therefore we get the new result.  That is what is happening with our economy today.

This is a big, big mess.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna