Posts Tagged ‘Julie Murphy Casserly’

The basis of everything I do is bridging the gap between emotions and money. I believe that emotional unrest will eventually lead to financial distress. To be in a healthy relationship with your finances, you need to be in a healthy and harmonious place emotionally.

Many would argue that the basis of our emotional state is our happiness. That we could not truly be happy if we are not emotionally sound and secure in who we are as human beings. Since we do not feel happy, we try to find that happiness at every possible corner. By that, I mean we look for happiness in all-things external hoping that it will eventually seep into our inner selves and turn us into happy people. When this doesn’t work, we are emotionally – and even sometimes physically – exhausted.

Does this sound familiar? Maybe you’ve realized that you surrounded yourself with negative people. Or that the work you do doesn’t fulfill you – you’re only working there because of the paycheck. Maybe one of your most important relationships had changed so much that it’s unrecognizable, and you’re devastated at the thought of letting go of someone that was at one time a central figure in your life.

Whatever the root of your unhappiness is, it is causing greater damage to your life than you may realize. But there is good news here; it doesn’t have to stay that way. You are in the driver’s seat of your life. You just have to accept where you are right now before you can speed off into the future.

Accepting yourself

You may not be able to change everything around you, but you can change yourself. To change, you must accept. Accept yourself. Accept yourself in your current reality. You must stop blaming yourself for your failures and instead empower yourself for the changes you can make right now for a better future.

Remove shame, blame, guilt and judgment from your life in all areas. But be sure to start with yourself. It’s okay that you made mistakes, got hurt, or said something wrong. Once you let go of perfection or an unattainably high standard, you’ll see that who you are is who you need to be to learn and grow. And that’s okay.

Before you can create solutions to your financial life ; before you can be innovative in your personal and professional lives; before you can shift to higher vibrations; before you can heal your relationship with money, you must accept yourself.

Not a month from now. Not 20 pounds from now. Not $15,000 from now. Not a new house from now.

Right now.

Action step

Where are you right now? Do you love yourself? Do you accept yourself? Are you willing to meet yourself where you are right now? In previous posts, I’ve told you to spend some quiet time thinking about a specific aspect of your life. But this week, I want you to do one simple thing that is the base of everything we’ve covered:

Accept yourself.

Accept your surroundings, your habits, and your current hobbies. Accept your failures and successes. Accept YOU – all of you; not just the good. Accepting who you are right now is what needs to happen before anything else can take flight.

How often to you find yourself looking to the outside to fix what’s going on in the inside? In this time where jobs are still shaky, incomes are still up in the air and your financial lives may be somewhat unstable, it seems easier to search for comfort in all things external. And sometimes, we wonder “what if?”

Questioning our choices during rocky periods is pretty normal for most people. We look at the things we’ve done in some or all of the areas in our lives, and we second guess the steps we’ve taken. Did we build the right career in our work life? Are we spending too much time worrying about relationships in our personal life? Will the economic instability affect our family life negatively? Is our financial life going to suffer because of the disorder happening in the other areas of our lives?

Finding ourselves in undesirable situations leaves us with two options: thinking “what if?” or changing our perspective. Instead of seeking out peace of mind in changing all-things exterior, look within. When we look to others for the roadmap to living our lives, we make things more complicated. Outside fixes cloud and confuse us, making the life path made specifically for us much harder to see.

Getting caught up in the outside things you can’t control can affect you deeply. Allowing what your parents think, what your kids want or what your siblings say to make your decisions is putting them in the driver’s seat of your life. To live your own life , you must first stop jumping on other people’s paths and then focus on the one crafted just for you.

Action step

Whose life are you living? Whose path are you walking on? If you’re not sure, that’s ok. Spend this week sorting out your actions from your true intentions. If you’re doing things that aren’t tapping into your heart space, why are you doing them?

Take a look at the things you do that are not fulfilling you. After you list those actions on paper, eliminate one of them this week. Replace it with something that’s more in line with your ideal life. Live the life of your dreams -  walk on the path made just for you – not anyone else’s.

Every January, we have high hopes for the year. We set big goals, make big plans and then hit the ground running towards our future success. Unfortunately though, strong starts don’t always lead to a similarly strong finish.

Since so many people seem to flounder in their “new selves” before the month is out, it’s safe to say that there’s a flaw in the system. It’s difficult to change hard-wired habits. Just because our eyes see 1-1 on a calendar and our minds know that this is an opportunity to make some big leap, our instincts don’t always get the message.

I’ve given you seven ideas to focus on for 2012, and we’ll spend the next twelve months diving deeper into each one. First, though, it’s a good idea to ask yourself what your goals really are. Before you ask for that raise, buy that dream home, lose those 15 pounds or start that business, you need to know what it is you are truly after.

What do you really want?

It’s easy to take a physical inventory of the things in your life right now. You’ve got “X” amount in the bank. You have a job you like. And you like where you live. But you’d like to travel more, have more freedom to create new products/services at work, and you want to lose a few pounds for beach season.

So you set your goals to get all of those things done. And you start making changes (usually, a lot of changes) so you can check that promotion, weight loss, or new car paid for in cash off of your list. But the motivation fades and the desire to go back to what’s comfortable overrides the one to change in the first place.

You may begin to make rationalizations about the things you were doing before. Your job isn’t that bad, and eventually your boss will give you that promotion.

Sound familiar?

This time around, I want to help you reach those goals you set for this year: your best year ever!! So instead of jumping head-first into this new you, take a moment and figure out what you really want. In order to get that long-term change you desire, you’ve got to take some time and figure that out. Remember, New Year’s resolutions start from within. Before you can begin to fix the outside as well as the inside, you need to first get down to the things you actually want.

Your action step

This week, think about the things you resolved to change or improve in 2012. Write them down on a piece of paper. Then, go deeper. Find the root of those desires. Is it to be happier? To have more freedom? To be healthier? Getting to the core of what really want is where long-term change truly begins.