Yesterday I cleared star thistle from the winter pasture for the horses. It’s a noxious weed that can harm horses if they decide it’s tasty, so this cloudy fall afternoon found me hacking at it with my handcrafted scythe. Yes, this tool makes me feel like an Amish woman, but it works wonders and is much more pleasant than the loud engine of a weed whacker.

As I slashed away the poisonous plants, a loud voice cried out in my earbuds, “What is your financial blueprint?!” The voice was that of T. Harv Eker and the audiobook was Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. The truth is, I wasn’t there in that pasture only to care for my herd. I was there to clear the poison in my mind.

Let me rewind. A few days before this, I logged into our bank accounts and credit cards. I could sense something was off and after some foot dragging, knew that I needed to take inventory of our finances. What I found shocked me. For the first time in ten years of partnership, our cash savings was drained. I took a breath. I reached out to my husband with the news. My heart leapt in panic. Being who I am today and knowing what I know about life, I knew the panic was unhelpful. I also knew that suppression was useless and avoidance futile. So, I sat with it. I let all the terrifying emotions arrive and be named.

When the kids were asleep, my husband and I met. We talked about money, I named my feelings, we considered our options, and made some decisions. I decided to reach out to my coach and business partner, Ezra. He always has practical feedback and I knew that I could use an outside perspective on things. My current beliefs have brought me this far, it was time to try something new.

My coach brought to light some key issues around valuing myself and working with my husband as a team. Then he offered the book recommendation by Eker. I promptly downloaded it from my Audible and headed to the pasture to listen, learn, and clear things up. What I found was an application of what I already know to be true, but offered with new words and wrapped in the language of making money. The truths rang clear, the new application brought new awareness’s, and anything that didn’t align in my heart I set aside.

So, here’s the secret to getting what you want: There are four steps to changing anything you want to change in your life. Your money, relationships, business, spiritual life, health, anything. The four steps are:

  1. Awareness -Unpack your suitcase of subconscious beliefs about X (in this case money)

  2. Choice – Decide what you want in your suitcase and what you are ready to leave behind.

  3. Action – Now, repack it with care and take it with you as you travel.

  4. Reflection – Notice what changes. Rinse & repeat as needed.

 

Let me dig into this a little more for your and my benefit. Bringing awareness to money is a powerful action to take because it’s a practical doorway into greater self understanding. The concept of Eker’s “financial blueprint” is very simple and it’s built on the laws of magnetism and energy. Money is a physical manifestation of energy. Magnetism is the law that states “energy + willpower = magnetism,” in other words, what we focus our attention on and give energy to grows.

The thoughts, feelings, and beliefs we wrap around money have a tangible effect on the role that money plays in our lives, it becomes our “financial blueprint.” A lot of this is subconscious. Most of it is built on early childhood experiences and learnings around money. As adults, we may refine our understanding of money, but unless we approach money with mindfulness and bring full awareness to it, we will likely continue to operate on our subconscious blueprint, no matter how incongruent it now feels.

In the process of bringing awareness to my subconscious beliefs about money (aka, unpacking my suitcase), I found that my personal thermostat for wealth is set with precision to $100,000. Exactly that amount. No more, no less. I was shocked when I discovered this about myself. I was even more shocked when I realized where that number came from.

Why $100,000? Simple. I grew up with a story about money and the story goes like this, “Once upon a time, mom and dad were young and had no money. They started a CPA firm in Nevada City and made some money. After two years, they sold it for $100,000 and used the money to buy a home in Ananda Village. Because they owned their home outright, they were able to both work for the church making less than most people do, but still raise their two kids. The end”

So, my subconscious file says this, “$100,000 is enough money to care for your family and dedicate your life to a mission, rather than have to make money doing something you don’t care about.” Here’s how that has played out. When my husband and I bought our first home 9.5 years ago and began building our lives together, I earned $100,000. When I lost my job and we sold our home, we had $90,000 in savings and $10,000 to buy a truck from the sale of our home. When that money dried up and I took another professional job, I earned $100,000. When the pandemic hit and I lost that job and we invested our savings, our combined savings sat at $100,000. This moment, the one where our cash is drained and it seems time to dip into savings, well, it happens that savings has reached $110,000. So, apparently my subconscious must think it’s time to cash out $10,000, so we can stay at $100,000 forever. It is worth noting that my husband has his own “financial blueprint” and it surely has an impact on our lives too. For this exercise, I’m keeping it about me.

There was more to unpack and unpack it I did. There was a belief that money brings choice and choice is dangerous because you might make the wrong one and in doing so, you might “fall off the spiritual path.” There’s also this desire to have enough money to not have to think about it anymore, ever. Then there’s this counter-balancing belief that money used for good causes is a good thing. These beliefs wrap around the core thermostat setting at $100,000 and hold my “financial blueprint” in place.

Holy “bleep”! That’s the power of our subconscious to manifest our lives with perfect precision. So, what now? Now that we’ve unpacked the suitcase, what do we do about it?

The next step is always choice and choice comes from bringing our conscious attention, our mindful awareness, to it. To make choices about what we pack into our suitcase is a process, not a one-time action. We may decide in our minds what we want to believe, but until we align our belief with feeling and spirit, it won’t yet have the power to change us. But, I am getting ahead of myself. We first must choose. So, here is what I choose to pack into my money suitcase:

  1. Money is energy and energy is infinite.

  2. I trust myself to make the best choice I can and embrace choice as my opportunity to learn.

  3. I set my financial thermostat to millions of dollars.

  4. I trust myself with millions of dollars and know that with it, I will serve my soul’s purpose and support others to do the same.

  5. I will care for my finances with mindful attention and take full responsibility for each choice that I make.

  6. I will work with my husband to make financial choices as a team, building our health and wealth for the good of the collective.

 

Now it’s time for action. This is where it gets juicy. This is where we begin the process of aligning our chosen beliefs with our lived experiences and begin to build power in them. I suggest taking your choices and posting them somewhere to remind yourself. I suggest deciding what actions to take now to begin to build faith in your new suitcase full of beliefs.

Here are my actions today:

  1. I will dedicate an hour (or more) each week to categorizing my expenditures and income in QuickBooks.

  2. I will meet with my husband regularly about finances, so we can better work as a team.

  3. I will pause and bring conscious choice into every purchase that I make.

  4. I will continue to study finances, so that I can make educated decisions.

  5. I will make investments with my family of time and treasure that move us toward abundance.

 

As I take these actions, I take time to reflect. How do these new actions feel? What is changing and how? This is a critical step along the journey. If our outer world does not change when we do, something remains out of alignment. I’ve had enough time at this work now to know the truth in that statement, but I’ll happily report back later.

May you find freedom through the choices of your life too!

Namaste,

Gita