Wow, thank you so very much to everyone who came to the telesession on Money yesterday morning.
If the conference was full when you tried to connect, fear not. You can listen (and watch) the whole thing right HERE.
If you follow along on the recording, you may find insights into your own thinking about money that you had not seen before. As you listen, you can get out your pen and paper and write with the prompts….and listen to other people’s answers.
It’s amazing how simply taking time to sit still to examine beliefs offers awareness. Often, I have had to enlist guidance of others to help me stay still and focus.
That busy, quick mind just loves to bounce and skip around to multiple stressful thoughts and situations….too many to actually inquire into! Tricky mind!
So, having you all come together is beyond inspiring, loving and supportive. I can’t say enough about this vital element of group connection and focus for successfully questioning the mind!
When I was nearly out of money, had been using my credit card to pay my mortgage, and was frantically looking for a job….
….with only a small amount of funds left in my bank account, I set aside $300 and hired a facilitator of The Work.
It almost seemed like a dumb idea. Didn’t I need that money to buy groceries?
This woman I contacted had a few people who she offered facilitation to, in her busy schedule, at a donation/sliding scale fee. I asked her if she could meet with me for ten sessions for that small amount.
She said yes.
Her name is Martha Creek, and I’m forever grateful for her kind, humorous, direct facilitation.
I had so many thoughts, such anxiety, waves of panic, and terrible images that I couldn’t sit still long enough all by myself to do The Work (I could have questioned that…but at the time, it did not seem true that I could sit still).
One night, I dialed the phone for her number, feeling somewhat hopeless and lost about what else I could question. We were having our 7th session together.
The lights were turned out for both my children. I had the entire night ahead of me, and I really wanted to sleep for some of it, instead of staying awake fretting about how to get more money.
I went into my bedroom and shut the door.
I wasn’t entirely sure The Work was working…and yet, something kept me at it.
I knew in my heart that my thoughts were dictating my reality. I knew my thoughts were so freaked out, I couldn’t see clearly. I also knew that I wanted to know the Truth, not demand that my life go the way I thought best.
Martha asked me to describe a little more what my greatest fear was if I did not somehow secure some money, or an income, SOON.
What would really, really happen then?
I would go live with my mother. She had a house big enough for me to move into her basement. I would move there with my children. She was completely open to this, she had said so.
“You are always welcome in my home if you can’t make it on your own,” she had told me several months before.
I thought of this as a terrible, horrific failure. How could a woman in her 40s, newly divorced, move in with her MOTHER? How awful, how devastating, what a loser, I had thought.
Through my work that night, I questioned my thinking that this was the worst thing that could ever happen when it came to having no money.
“What would be the benefits to moving into your mom’s house?” Martha asked.
Woah. Benefits? Seriously?
I waited. I knew they had to be there, in this world of duality. Nothing is ever 100% terrible.
That night, because Martha stayed with me in a way that I couldn’t stay there for myself, I found the opportunity I would have for being close to my mom, for resolving little anxieties I had about being with her all the time.
I saw how fun it might be to share a cozy room with my two kids. I delighted in thinking of being in a different location and exploring new streets, new shops, new sidewalks.
Maybe all was well. Maybe relying on others was not the disaster I thought.
In the telesession about Money yesterday, several people identified this same troubling belief….
….that relying on others around anything to do with Money is horrible, and necessary, at the same time.
What if you drop the “horrible” part?
Years later now, I look back at that time that I worked so hard on money, and know that something shifted for me dramatically during that session on moving in with my mother.
I stopped being afraid of what would happen next.
I called up my mom the very next day and said “Wow, mom, what would it really be like for you if I moved in? What would you need and want? I’d like to tell you what I would need and want. Instead of feeling like a failure…maybe it would be a success! What do you think, mom?”
We had one of the best conversations we had about money and the little intricacies of living together that we ever had. Honest communication.
Not long after this, my new boyfriend gave me what he called the Birthday Bucket, a donation of money, for my birthday, from people all over the world who knew me. People I hadn’t seen in years even.
(More on that story in a past Grace Note HERE if you want to read that story.)
That donation carried me through another entire month of expenses. During that month, I got a job.
I never had to move in with my mother.
But I’m positive, it would have been OK had it gone that way. I wouldn’t have been a failure.
That was all in my head.
If you’d like to do some in-depth work on money, earning, promoting yourself (if you’re in business or even if you’re looking for a job) then come join me on Thursdays, for 8 weeks, to do The Work on Money with a small group.
We meet 8 – 9:30 am Pacific Time. Click HERE to sign up, or hit reply and write me if you have a question.
Tortures of Obsessive Thinking About Money Gone “Can I really take a class on earning money and have the tortures of of my obsessive thinking about it let go, even a little? Eight weeks later, the answer turns out to be, yes! What I am taking away from our work together, is that my source of support does not come from black scratchings on a piece of (bank statement) paper. My bed rock of support is already here, within and without, all around me. Thanks for the thought provoking questions, blog posts and your own findings through out the class.” ~ JD, Money Teleclass ParticipantWith Love, Grace