The key is to recognize the pattern we have.  Often this is more related to your income and the dividing trick might not work for you.  Still you have to recognize the pattern that makes it happen and acknowledge that this is something in your past, not the present or future.  Your future is going to be different and you have to decide how different your future is going to be.

Remember that at one time in the past you had not yet crossed a street by yourself.  Then you did, and now that is in your past.  The street no longer limits you and you don’t even think about it.  The same goes for other limitations in your life.  You can earn more money and you have to allow yourself to do so.  That way you can start living a Life of Abundance.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

It is like our brain goes on autopilot and before we know we are doing and saying the same things as we have been for so long.  The explanation is simple.  We have created a pathway in our brain.  It is just like when we start driving.  In the beginning we have to focus on everything we do and on our surroundings to know how to react.  After some time we master the skill and start to do the driving as a natural thing, like we are on autopilot.  The same thing happens with our automatic underearning behavior.

When we leave underearning behind we are charting into a new territory.  Our brain only has the old brain pathway, so now we are creating new pathways and it will take some time to do that.  In the beginning it can be very scary to head into this new territory.  But the payoff is much more than worth it.

What is your payoff going to be for leaving underearning behind and start earning what you need and deserve?  A Life of Abundance?

Love and peace,

ElinAnna

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

The question is how is it going to change?  What is needed for them to get paid more?  If you are one of these people then you need to do something different.  It is obvious that the same old – same old is not working.  Since it hasn’t happened in the past it is very unlikely to happen in the future.  There is a saying that if you want a different result you have to do things differently.  Doing the same as you have always done will only give you the same results, therefore different result require different actions.

The first thing you can do is to sit down and brainstorm about what you can do differently.  There are for sure simple things that you can start doing today and then there are other things that will require more time.  By looking for opportunities to do things differently, you have already started the process.  It is important to keep at it.  You are the catalyst in your life!  It is only by changing your actions and your mind that you can change your life and start living the life you want 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

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

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

So many women are taught to think of themselves as good girls, not to make a scene. “Don’t think of yourself as something more than the other girls.” The only allowed difference is in how well they maintain a home, child raring and how good listeners they are. Accomplishments shouldn’t be talked about. People will notice them if they are worth noticing, and appreciated if they ever become worthy of such a thing.

It is amazing to see this in so many women today. Even today, girls are still taught the same things, as we, our mothers and even grandmothers were taught. The problem is that this is not working for women today (probably never has). And it will definitely not work for the women of the future.

Thinking less of ourselves does not work for us and will only keep us in the same place of underearning. It is difficult to fell good about ourselves when we are in such a passive and negative mode. Today women should be expected to appreciate and talk about their own accomplishments. Women are not all the same. We are different, with different qualities, qualities that make a difference in the world. God created each of us as unique beings for a reason. Allow that reason to come through.

It does not sever you or for that matter anyone else that you put yourself down or stand on the sideline waiting for someone to notice you. Allow God’s creation to come through and shine. It is in being your unique authentic self that your Life of Abundance can become a reality.

Love and peace,

ElinAnna