Fear is something that keeps many underearners stuck in their underearning.  They tell themselves that this is the only way to be.  The fear of taking action is overwhelming.

In my cleaning up after the move I came across this book I read many years ago, “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway” by Susan Jeffers, Ph.D.  As I started to read it again I remembered how great this book is and how it helped me to move forward with my life despite the fears.  I also noticed how the fears became less of an issue.  We grow through doing and by moving forward, as I talked about in my last blog.  And to get different results we have to do things differently.

But resting in our comfortable ways is not going to yield us different results.  We have to stop letting fear hinder us from doing something different, feel the fear and do it anyway.  This will allow us to live 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

We do acknowledge that it used to be like this.  For example when women had do ware girdles that nearly suffocated them, but now a days?  How can that be?  Well, some shoes are damaging women’s feet and women endure a lot pain due to problems related to shoes that we are told make us look beautiful.  Then there is the cultural pressure on how your body should look.  This calls for even more drastic adjustments, like breast implants, diets and liposuction.  It is incredible how little things have changed and it is not surprising that so many women are underearners when society makes it very hard for them to stand on their own feet, figuratively and literally.

What about women in the media?  What is reported on when a woman is in the news?  In most cases it is on how she looks, what she is wearing, and so on.  A good example of this is when First Lady Michelle Obama is in the news.  The thing that is thought to be newsworthy is how she looks, not what she says.  This is a woman that has in the past been recognized for her intelligence.  She was known as an excellent lawyer and a driver for change wherever she was.  When she talks she undoubtedly has a lot to say that is worth talking about.  Still, what is deemed newsworthy is her dress.  This is rather sad.  But at least she is a good role model intellectually and in appearance.

Who are the role models of today’s girls?  Is it the fashionable Michelle Obama or the savvy lawyer and activist Michelle Obama?

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

How can so many people have such great answers to this question and still be wrong?  There are many ways to answer this, but I am only going to talk about one,  the horrible belief that we are not worth more.  Women, especially, are very likely to hold this belief because of their upbringing.  When we have this belief everything around us confirms it.  Our brain in set to find the proves and nothing else.  If we get a compliment we explain them away, “the person is only trying to be nice” or “they had to say that”.  On top of that we belittle our work and say: “This is the same as anybody else would have done”, or “It’s nothing special about what I said or did”.  Just like before the list of excuses goes on and on.

The brain is funny in this way.  If we tell the brain something it takes it as a fact and finds all the proofs to confirm that statement.  So, if we say that we are clumsy this will be confirmed and we do clumsy things.  If we say that we are not worth more, the brain will set out to prove that.

Now, what happens if we tell ourselves that we are smart and worth much more?  Well, actually the brain will start to gather evidence to prove this statement.  This statement can not be made superficially.  We have to convince both minds, the conscious and subconscious, that this is a fact.

This sounds rather complicated, when in fact it isn’t.  You can start today with the thought that you are good with money.  Then start finding the proofs that support this statement.  When we tell our brain something and then give it direct order to find proofs the brain works wonders.  If you do not feel confident about yourself then go and look for proof that women are good with money.  There are many women in today’s world that are living proof of this statement.  Then go back and look for the proof in yourself.  It is amazing what happens in this process.  I and many others have used this process or a variation of it.

Isn’t it more fun to be looking for the positive in life?  It is through positive thoughts and beliefs that we learn how to live a Life of Abundance.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

The good thing is that we can choose what kind of a relationship we have with money.  It is totally up to us.  Up to now this relationship has been destructive, but now it can end.  This might sound like a contradiction, but it isn’t.  We can’t be constantly running away from money, which is the way the relationship has been.  The reason we are running away is that we view money as a Monster we hate and it frightens us.  So, the simple thing to do is to get rid of this Money Monster.  Now we have created an empty space.  We can decide to fill this space with a loving and caring Money, a true relationship partner instead of an adversary.  It is a Money that adores us and believes in us.  This relationship partner is perfect.  This honey knows that we are resourceful, and that we can take care of our new Money Honey and ourselves.

By ending this bad relationship we have had with the Money Monster we end the stress it puts in our lives.  Instead we are being smart and enjoying money.  It is amazing what happens when we have a partner in our life that supports us.

This is what Financial Alchemy is all about.  We get rid of the crap and pain that is the Monster and replace it with a loving Money Honey we truly deserve.   With this new relationship we can live a Life of Abundance.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

Most of us have a story that explains why our financial situation is what it is.  That story keeps you were you are.  It does little to move you out of the situation you are in.  As an example, Barbara Stanny in her book “Overcoming Underearning” tells about a conversation she had with her financial counselor Karen McCall.  When Karen told Barbara that she was an underearner and that she was earning well below what she could and should be earning, Barbara immediately went to her story that explained why she couldn’t earn more.  It was because she was writer and everybody knows that writers don’t make any money.  This is before she learned that this is only a myth and since then she has made substantially more money.

What are the myths that you are holding onto?

A friend of mine told me about a conversation she had with a woman.  This woman was asking for some business advice.  In their conversation it came out that the woman thought that a man should come and take care of her.  This was what her mother had taught her, and she was still holding onto the myth of the knight in shining armor coming and saving her.  Not realizing that she was her own knight in shining armor and that she was the one that was going to save her.  Of course her business didn’t stand a chance until she was willing to stand up and take care of herself.  She would have to let go of the story that was holding her back.

How many of us have been telling ourselves a lie like that?  And guess what happens, the results are the same as it was for this woman.  But wait!   What if we told ourselves that we are the knight?  We are the one that can and should break through the barrier that is keeping us in the status quo.

To continue the fairytale metaphor the knight in a shining armor could also be a magic queen or king that with a wave of a magics wand changes the story.  Your story is unique and only you can make the change you seek.  If you don’t like the way you are living your life then wave your magic wand to change it.  By changing the stories that are keeping you trapped in the dungeon of underearning, you can escape.  Giving up the old familiar story might be scary, but think about it, which one is scarier, trapped in the dungeon of underearning or free, living a life of abundance?

So look at the stories you are telling yourself and question them.  Then change the ones that are not serving you on the path to living a Life of Abundance.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

Money and Underearners do not seem to go together.  If it were a relationship between two people we would know that it would be doomed.  The problem is that we have to have a relationship with money as long as we live in the developed world.  We might be able to have a great relationship with other people, like a loved one, but money is something totally different.

This is what I see around me and have experienced myself.  As so many underearners I have wondered what the magic of money is, how to attract it and make it stay.

In my search for answers I found Morgana Rae and her Financial Alchemy.  This was few years ago and last month I was lucky enough to interview her about her take on people and money.

Her take on this issue is very different from others.  It is amazing how she deals with money.  Where so many others have a very stressful, strained and at the best a love/hate relationship with money, she has a totally different relationship.  Her relationship can be described in a lengthy paragraph or in one word, LOVE.

She has taken money and humanized it.  For as she says: “I don’t know how to have a relationship with a thing or energy, but I do know how to have a relationship with a person.”  By making money a person she can better understand the relationship and do something about it.  Through her Financial Alchemy coaching she gets rid of the Money that we are having this strained relationship with.  If the current Money is no good, we get rid of him/her (a person always has a gender) and by magic a loving, caring and affectionate Money Honey replaces the old money monster, the one we didn’t like or even wanted to have a relationship with.

When we have a loving relationship with money, magic happens.  The magic that happens is that money wants to be with you, it is attracted to you, and you want to be with money.  What comes out of this new relationship depends on what you want to put into it.  By nurturing this new relationship you can start living a Life of Abundance.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

Part of being an underearner is being hesitant of dealing with money and the finances. Many underearners have a fear of money and everything that comes with it. They conjure up elaborate pictures of everything that can go wrong with money and then wait for it to happen.

One of the amazing things in life is that when we focus on something we end up going there (see my blog “Keep Your Eyes On Where You Want To Go”). What we focus on is what our mind will see. For example if you are thinking of buying a red Ford Taurus then you will start seeing all the red Taurus’ that are out there. We automatically look for all the examples that support our thoughts, be it an opinion or desire.

Now, if we bring that back to money and how this affects us, we see all the stereotypes and stories that support our beliefs about money and people with or without money. This even happens when we have excellent examples of the opposite (see my blog “What Do Our Role Models Tell Us About Money?”).

A friend of mine had this stereotype of women with money being cold, selfish and alone. She would talk about that one minute and then the next minute she would start talking about a friend who has a lot of money, takes care of herself, goes on vacations and donates money to causes that she is passionate about. She described her as friendly and warm, and an overall wonderful person. Still, even with this great example so close to her, she believed that having money would make her a cold, rigid and basically bad person.

She was so terrified of this image that she wouldn’t even dare start focusing on where the money was coming from or where it went because it might affect how she enjoyed life in a negative way. In the mean time she spent her time agonizing over money. “Do I have enough to cover what I spent this morning, will there be …” and so on. Often she didn’t have enough in her accounts and would pay penalty fees. When that happened she would frantically try to come up with some money, which she usually accomplished. It wasn’t unusual for her to find a check in her unopened mail.

One day I asked her to tally up what she had been paying in financial fees in one month. A quick look yielded hundreds of dollars. Just the financial fees from her recklessness would have paid for the cleaning services she had constantly been talking about and complained that she couldn’t afford. What was even more interesting was that she could even afford it by just cutting her visits to the coffee shop by half. Her justification for the coffee expense was that she was so stressed and tiered all the time. What do you think was the reason for her stress and exhaustion? MONEY.

My friend was so stuck on this way of thinking that she believed that she did not have enough money and never would. And we cannot forget that, according to her, anybody with money has to be bad and that the money is what makes them bad. As should be obvious by now, her beliefs about money was holding her back big time. Not only financially, but it was also holding her in a state of fear and uncertainty. She could not allow herself to become what all her friends knew she could be, talented and successful. Instead she had made up this story that she couldn’t succeed and she worked hard on living up to it.

What would happen if she would throw out all the old beliefs about money and become fully what she is, become her authentic self? Well, our talk about the financial fees and coffee gave her an epiphany that caused her to change her beliefs and her life changed forever. With the old negative beliefs gone she filled her mind with positive beliefs and thoughts about money, and she lived up to that new story. Became her true self.

Think about how her life is now that she sees money as something that can make people wonderful and caring human beings. Still this is not easy. It is a major transformation to start seeing money in this positive light, that it can make people loving and caring. But as soon as you start the transformation the stress and worries in your life will start to vanish.

Which life would you like to live: a life of stress and worry or a Life of Abundance?

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

My hypercritical inner critic has been working overtime lately. Although I have been able to write, it has been difficult in getting it past the critic. My inner critic demands perfection and does not allow any flaws. As a result I have been running in circles around the critic trying to please him. It is exhausting and feels like everything I do is flawed. I ask myself: How come other people can do such amazing things and I can’t? My critic is quick to answer: They are also flawed, and then points out all the flaws. Now this is getting ridiculous and absurd. If everyone is flawed and what they do is such a failure, how can we have the wonderful things and experiences that are so much fun?

Then I remembered a quote by George Bernard Shaw: “When I was a young man I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn’t want to be a failure, so I did ten times more work.”

So this is how great people do great things, I thought to myself. No wonder not much is coming from me. I am behind in doing things, both the failures that are nine out of ten and the success that is one out of ten. It takes practice and perseverance to get to the tenth.

Now when the critic starts I thank him and point out to him that this is what is needed to get to the good stuff. If a great writer like George Bernard Shaw had these odds and kept on going, why wouldn’t you and I?

As an underearner we are usually hard on ourselves and good at putting ourselves down. So, what I am learning from this is that I have to keep going. The Noble laurite who became a wealthy man used this method and I why shouldn’t I? It is by keep on doing and learning that I can live a life of abundance.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

Mrs. Sanford did not stand beside her husband, the Governor of South Carolina, as he told the world he had been cheating on her with another woman. He took the heat from the media about his behavior toward his wife and his State, alone. It was obvious that he had done this alone.

This is different to many other wives of politicians that have admitted publicly they had been unfaithful to their wives. The wife stands there beside the adulterer in the media frenzy to take the heat with him. She stands there usually silent. The only thought I have is why does she do that? It was her husband and his actions that got him into this position. What these politicians did against their wives was bad enough. Do the wives really have to stand there as a victim for everybody to stare at?

In an article I read in the NY Times about Mrs. Sanford, it was quite clear that she will not be drawn into the mess and she is not a victim. She has never abandoned or sacrificed herself for her husband. Whatever happens she will stand strong and come out of this, as a woman that has her boundaries intact and will not give up on them.

If the marriage is over she will able to take care of herself and excel like she has always done in her life. Now the only question is: will her husband she married be with her as she does it again?

What is different with Mrs. Sanford compared to so many underearners? She has not given up on herself. She has her own identity. Even though she helped her husband build his political career she never abandoned herself. It is obvious that she knows herself and is confident in her own ability to succeed no matter what. She will move on to live a life of abundance.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna