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Healing Your Relationship
With Money
Commitments One and Two: I
am committed to healing my relationship with
money AND I am committed to clearing up anything in
the way of my ability to do so.
What
Stands In the Way of Healing Your Relationship With Money?
This
morning I met my friend LuAnne for coffee at Starbucks
and I came home
to find a yapping puppy locked in my dog's crate and my dog locked in my
bedroom.
Having
spent a great deal of time and energy training my
dog not to soil in the house, by using her crate as "home," I was not
happy to discover that she'd been placed in a situation where she could have had
an accident, through no fault of her own.
Immediately,
my attention was diverted away from getting my newsletter out and toward being
resentful that my dog was placed in this situation and that the puppy had soiled
the crate bedding. I found myself focusing on finding a
better place for the puppy (the downstairs powder room, with
a warm towel). But the yapping continued and I allowed myself to get caught up
in the cacophony.
I
called my friend Linda, a fellow crate-training dog-owner
and spiritual traveler, and asked for help re-framing what the yapping
represented.
"What
are you writing about this issue?" she asked.
"Commitments
One and Two on the path toward healing our
relationships with money," I replied. "It's about being committed to
clearing up anything that stands in the way of healing our money
relationships."
"Maybe
the yapping dog represents all those things that
we allow ourselves to be distracted by instead of staying focused on the work
we're trying to do, in order to heal our relationship with money," she
suggested.
Her
words helped me recognize how I gave my power over to
this situation, and how I chose to divert my energy. I resolved the immediate
issue, put the puppy in a safer place, and put the bedding into the washer. Then
I went back to my computer, put on some relaxing music, and began
seeing the yapping as a reminder.
Yes,
there are always going to be things that will distract
us from our goal of healing our relationships with money.
It will always be easier to focus on those things instead of focusing on the
places where we need healing. And we will always have good excuses for why we
didn't get around
to the work we "wanted" to do. We had good intentions, after all,
right?
The
drawback with good intentions is that they will always
remain intentions. They will always be "something I meant to do,
but..." The only way to turn an intention into a goal is to consciously
commit to it. The only way to turn your intention to heal your relationship with
money into actual
healing is to concretely outline the goal.
What
is it, exactly, that you want to do? Do you want to
stop living paycheck to paycheck? Do you want to stop feeling like you don't
have enough? Do you want to stop feeling like you can't afford the things you
want to do, be or have for yourself and your loved ones? Do you want
to stop feeling indebted to others? Do you want to stop arguing about how money
is spent in your home? Do you want to start feeling more comfortable about
giving and receiving money?
You
probably have a number of these intentions floating
around in your head, and they're very good intentions. Country music singer
Travis Tritt has a ballad called "The Best of Intentions."
Hearing the song, I visualized him making a commitment to his spouse,
carrying through on that commitment throughout the years, occasionally falling
short as we all do, but expressing the fact that even when he fell short his
intentions were
pure.
Then
one day I saw the video. The video unfolds with Travis
playing a man who is in and out of jail, expressing remorse for all the times
he let his wife down. He had the best of intentions, but he never took any
actions toward making a commitment to stop putting himself in situations that
would
land him in jail.
Many
of us state our intention to get out of debt. But we
don't make a commitment to stop putting ourselves in situations that add to our
debt. Instead, especially during the holiday season, we rationalize every time
we spend more money than we truly want to. What stops us from honoring
our commitment to ourselves?
Fear.
It always comes back to fear. We're afraid other
people will think we're cheap. Or we're afraid someone will buy us something
more expensive than what we bought them. Or we're afraid our children will think
poorly of us if we don't buy them what they asked for.
We
use the fear to put up obstacles to our commitment.
This way we can avoid facing the fear. Instead, we can point to the obstacles
and say things like "I would have, but..." or "I was going to,
but..."
Making
the commitment to heal our relationship with money
is a great first step. But it is meaningless unless we're ready to also commit
to removing the obstacles that we create in order to avoid honoring that
commitment. How do we commit to clearing up the things that stand in the way
of having a whole, healthy relationship with money?
A
good starting point is to acknowledge what your obstacles
are. Then look beyond the obstacles to identify the fear that caused you to
create the obstacles. If you owe someone money, for example, the obstacle to
honoring your commitment to getting out of debt may be that your clients are
slow to pay you. But that's not the reason you haven't set up a
repayment plan of some sort. You may have unexpressed
anger, resentment or envy toward the person you owe money. Or you may be afraid
that any repayment plan you suggest will be rejected. Or you may be afraid to
look at how much debt you actually have -- and setting up a plan to repay
the debt would mean acknowledging what you actually owe.
During
the next two weeks, take five minutes every day
to commit to healing your relationship with money and to identifying and
clearing up the obstacles that stand in the way of you achieving this goal. Turn
those good
intentions into firm commitments and step out in faith,
leaving the fear behind.
*******
Paula
Langguth Ryan is a contemporary prosperity advisor,
author and motivational speaker. She is devoted to helping people release their
limiting beliefs -- so they may achieve personal prosperity and
abundance in all areas of their lives. If this booklet fed your soul, tithes and
offerings are gratefully accepted to support the continuation of this work: Paula Langguth Ryan,
1121 Annapolis Road, Suite 120,
Odenton, MD 21113.
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