Read FIND YOUR HAPPY: An Inspirational Guide to Loving Life to Its Fullest Online
Authors: Shannon Kaiser
Now that I am a writer, I love working from coffee shops. But when I realized that I was spending over $40 a week at Starbucks, light bulbs went off like flickering spotlights. If I just cut back, I could save over $1,000 in six months.
Voilà!
There is my plane ticket to Brazil! The money-in, money-out balance is all about focusing on priorities and making sure your needs are met. By no means am I a money expert. We have people like Suze Orman for that. But I do have a hefty list of things I am tackling before I exit planet earth, and the reality is that all of them require money. So how do we make the money to spend on the things we love?
Making Money Has Nothing
To Do with Your Job
For the longest time, I believed that the money I made was only connected to the job I performed. In the technical sense, yes, of course it was, but in the energetic sense it was not. Stay with me for a moment. I spent many years suffering in a job that denied me joy, but the money was so fantastic I convinced myself that everyone needed to pretend to be happy so we can get the paycheck, pay our bills, and feel guilty for requesting vacation time off. We tie money to the jobs we take. One common thing we think is the only way to get security with steady money is through “The Man,” corporate America. It took me many years of pushing and pulling with my internal self to realize that the job I take doesn’t have to be my career. Just like mini chapters of a book, jobs are chapters in our working life. The real career is life.
As soon as I let go of the expectation of taking a job because of a steady paycheck, I felt more secure than ever before. I recognized that money would always come and go. In learning that our career does not define us or make us who we are, we let go of the demands we put on the dollar bill. The notion of making our lives our career is far more interesting to me. If we think about what a career can do for us in the traditional sense, we can break apart the elements and apply it to our lives.
A career is designed to provide a platform for professional growth. It is a place to feel a sense of worth and contribution. Careers help people define what they want. The days of staying in one career for an entire lifetime died when the baby boomers were born. With so many fantastic opportunities and so many precious people wanting to reach their full potential, it’s almost mandatory for us to explore. Humans, by nature, are curious creatures and we want to see what is available to us. Finding a perfect career takes time.
Too often, people settle into a comfortable existence where they skate through on just enough effort to make sure they keep getting that paycheck. They zombie home to watch negative news and play video games, only to wake up more lethargic than the day before. This book isn’t for them; you are reading this book because you want more out of your life. Whether you are looking for a career shift, or wanting to feel freer in your everyday life, choosing to accept your life in the present moment is the key to abundance.
Nothing is forever. The job you are in, the boss you have, the amount of money you make is all temporary, a moment in time in your present story. As your story unfolds you grow, change, need more, want less, etc. The point is the amount of money you make right now and the job you are doing right now, is not your permanent state. We put so much pressure on ourselves, and cause even more stress, by assuming that our lives are not the way we planned. The problem with trying to be somewhere you are not is you are not accepting or appreciating where you are. By simply shifting our perception to appreciate the moment we have, we can loosen our tension with money and our jobs.
Give without Expecting
It’s been said that there are two types of people: those who give freely and those who give expecting something in return. It is possible to cross over into both categories, but generally there is one you can relate to most. Being more generous echoes the golden rule: Do unto others as you wish them to do unto you. Giving without expecting anything in return will open you up to new opportunities. There is a balance of energy that exists when you freely give yourself, your time, your energy, or your money to someone or something you believe in. Ask yourself how you can serve someone else.
I learned about this concept through my mentor relationship with best-selling author, spiritual guru Gabrielle Bernstein. She and I were connected in the beginning through a mishap when I ordered some books from her online store. She had gifted me one free coaching session for a delay in the book order. As we were talking on the phone, she discovered that I was a graphic designer while she happened to be looking for a new designer that very week. Soon, I became her full-time designer, and she was my full-time, spiritual running buddy and writing coach. The fact that she gave her time to me for a free coaching session and was not expecting anything back allowed both of us to be open to the beautiful friendship we now have.
When I talk about giving without expecting anything in return, I am not just talking about money. Sometimes we don’t have money to give, but we have time and energy. If we spend all of our lives running the line, “I have no time, or energy, or money,” then we are not even giving to ourselves. Why are we filling up our schedules with so much stuff?
Find
Your
Happy
is meant to help us remove this extraneous stuff so we can be free and light on our feet. It starts with giving and forgiving. We already talked about forgiving so here we are looking at giving. Bottom line is the more you give the more you will receive. The universe will gift you in more abundance when you share your gifts, talents, energy, time, and money.
Awesome
Opportunity:
1. What have you not given yourself that you know you want? (More time for yourself, a special gift you’ve been eyeballing for months, a trip?)
2. What is the reason you have not allowed yourself to get what you want?
3. Now flip the coin and look at what you are not giving to other people. (Time, attention, listening?)
4. Where do you think you can give a little more to both your personal life and others?
5. What do you think would happen if you gave to other people what they are not currently getting?
6. For the next week, practice giving. Start to say yes to life and give yourself fully to life in every possible way.
In
a
Nutshell:
1. We are always going to have enough money for what we need. The universe always has us covered and the universe never gives us more than we can handle.
2. Our choices make the biggest difference in how we relate to money. We get what we give.
3. Money should not be tied to a career. Your life is your career and money will always support your life.
4. The universe will gift you in more abundance when you share your gifts, talents, energy, time, and money.
5. Spending money is just as important as saving it.
Additional Resources:
Audio Meditation:
Find
Your
Happy:
Motivational
Mantras,
Track 12, “Be Thankful” (available on iTunes,
amazon.com
, and
playwiththeworld.com
shop).
Becom
e
a
Maste
r
Manifester
.
Se
t
Goals.
“Success
means
having
the
courage,
the
determination,
and
the
will
to
become
the
person
you
believe
you
were
meant
to
be.”
— George Sheehan
Focus on What You Want
T
he power in setting goals is tremendous. The wealthiest people in the world set goals. A goal is simply a vision or dream realized. The dictionary defines it as the destination of a journey, but I believe the journey is part of a goal. It is just as important to work towards a desired outcome as it is to achieve that outcome. People who make goals are not always go-getters, entrepreneurs, or self-motivated people. These are all certainly helpful traits to have, but anyone can make goals. Anyone can achieve outstanding success from having a clearly defined focus.
I make three-month goals, six-month goals, and one-year goals. I also make weekly goals, and my results are profound. When I write something down, it is amazing how the brain goes to work at solving the hows, and busts through obstacles. Sometimes I make a goal for six months out and in one month I realize it has been reached. That is the power of creating a magnificent life. Setting goals is the cornerstone to designing a spectacular you. The first step is to focus on what you want.
We all have situations in our lives that might not be working as well as we would like, but focusing on the things that aren’t working will not get us any closer to achieving a goal. Say you want a new car because your current car is breaking down all the time. If you focus your energy on the fact that your car is unreliable, your energy will be exhausted on the problem, not on the solution. If you shift your energy and mindset to focus on what you want, a new Jeep Wrangler, let’s say, you will find this goal will be realized faster than if you did not think about it. Do you ever notice when you start thinking about things, they suddenly appear in your world? This is not an accident, whether it is a type of car, a dog or even the name of a person. When we focus our energy on things we want, we will always manifest them to reality. If you want to lose weight, focus on the feelings of being lighter, your clothes fitting better, and the world responding to the new, thin, vibrant you. It will be impossible to lose weight if you are currently in a state of self-hate, pity, and overindulgence. If you look in the mirror and ridicule yourself for being pudgy, then your goal of losing weight becomes much harder to achieve. Making goals is the first part. Feeling your goals is the key that people often skip over.
Feeling Your Goals and the
Power of Vision Boards
It is important to be clear about what you want, but that is only the first part to making your dreams a reality. There are six main aspects to reaching your goals.
1. Be clear – make a desire statement.
2. Focus on what you want.
3. Act towards it.
4. State the intention of your goal.
5. Let go of the how.
6. Keep focusing on what you want until it happens.
As I said earlier, being clear is often the hardest part.
Many
people
don’t
know
what
they
want
so
they
keep
getting
what
they
don’t
want.
When you align yourself with a clear focus, you have a direction to work towards, a blueprint to set you on the right path to making your dreams a reality. I make desire statements and then I say them every day. To help manifest what you want, you can make desire statements too.
How
to
make
a
desire
statement:
1. Think about what you want and write it down in one sentence or less. (I want to own a new car, for example.)
2. Now be as specific as possible and make it present tense. Rather than “I want,” or “I will,” say “I own,” etc. and put a date to which you want to accomplish your goal. (“I own a red Jeep Wrangler soft-top by July 30.”)
3. Now that you have a desire statement you can repeat this every day (or why not every hour?) to help you stay focused.
I continue to update, change and revise my desire statements but the beauty is that with each new statement I have more focus. These statements can help you not only manifest more quickly but also help you see the power of intention in action.
The second part to making goals a reality is to focus on what you want. It will help you get to what you want much faster than wasting energy on what you don’t want. Think about something you wanted in the past and actually got. Most likely you were thinking about it a lot. Perhaps you started to see it more, and most likely without much effort you got it. That is the beauty of thinking positively and focusing on the good things. You will get more good things, and rather quickly.
The third part to making goals a reality is to act towards it. I have a goal to be a best-selling book author, so every day I am working on my platform, developing larger networks and updating my website. Every day, take at least one action towards your goal, whether it is a phone call, research online, or buying a book to learn more about it. Taking a step towards what you want not only shows the universe you are serious, but it puts you in line for opportunities to come your way. In my workshops and lectures, I tell people to do one thing everyday that you future-self will thank you for.
The fourth part many people skip over because it seems rather obvious. Ask yourself, “Why do I want this?” Most of us say because it will make us happy to get it, but I challenge you to dig a little deeper and find the root of the goal. If you want to lose weight, you may think it will make you happier but what is the deeper reason? Maybe the reason is because you want to love and accept yourself more or you want to live longer and be healthier. I want to be a best-selling book author so my message can get out to the masses, rather than the few. The more people I can serve the more fulfilled I am because I want to make a difference in other peoples’ lives. Where as the surface aspect of my goal might be, I want to be a best selling author to establish my writing career. Only until I dug deeper could I reveal the real reasons. Ask yourself, “Why do I want this?” Many times we can learn more about ourselves by seeing the root of the goal.