Let Us Count the $ Ways

A couple years ago fellow coach Tom (who teaches me great stuff!) shared a story he heard from Eckhart Tolle that went something like this:

It’s as if you are an apartment building, with lots of doors and windows. It’s through your open doors and windows that the Universe delivers the goods you’ve been asking for. The challenge is that most of us have many of our doors and windows closed up. For example, Tolle suggested, when it comes to Money, most of us have all our doors and windows locked up tight, except for one - cracked open just an inch or two - which we call our JOB.

The point being that our belief system doesn’t allow most of us to receive as much money as we could be, as easily as we could be. So all Universe has to work with is a couple of inches. It has to try to squeeze through all the money we’ve been desiring through this one barely open window. When instead, if we had all our doors and windows wide open, money (and everything else we want) could quickly and easily flow in! I’ve found through work with clients, and even in myself at times, that if we don’t see “how” money could come to us, we’re stumped in being able to believe it will. For that reason, I’d like us to open some doors and windows right now by sharing here all the different ways we know, believe, and imagine money could flow into one’s life. Please share your story about how money came into your world unexpectedly or unusually! I’ll start a short list here, and will add to it based on your comments. (Don’t worry about reading all the comments to see if someone else already posted yours - repeats are great!!) Possible Ways Money Could Enter a Person’s Life:

• Earn itrn
• Inherit itrn
• Find itrn
• Be gifted itrn
• Win itrn
• Conjure it (I’ve done it)
• Grow it (investments, money trees)
• Print itrn
• Steal it (Martha says if you don’t include something illegal, immoral or unethical, you’re not thinking outisde the box!)
• Borrow itrn
• Remember it (it’s been there all along!)
• Keep it (when you were expecting to part with it)
• Raise it (sell something, fundraise, etc.)

Here are a few of my favorite stories about money coming in effortlessly through wide open windows besides the J-O-B one: After intending more money into his pocket, a client’s mother asked him to read a letter she just received from the Department of Unclaimed Property. It was alerting her that there was a balance due to her, but she had to complete paperwork in order to claim it. She told her son if he would do the paperwork, he could keep whatever came from it. He deposited a check for over $6,000 shortly afterward! It actually used to be my J-O-B to notify people that they had a balance in a 401k plan that we needed to distribute to them (by law). More often than not, they had totally forgotten or never even knew they had any money in the plan. Those were fun letters to send and checks to cut! One of my clients is masterful at attracting investors to his coaching business. Most coaches don’t grow their business with someone else’s money, but he has been offered three different (five figure) investments by various people who wanted to support him in his impactful work. Friend and fellow coach Michele just tweeted yesterday while talking to the IRS that instead of owing them money, it turns out they owe her money! Way to go, Michele! Those of you who have worked with me have heard my story about intending effortless easy money, only to discover weeks later that my bank balance was mysteriously higher than it should have been. Repeatedly. Even after letting the bank know there was a mistake, the process continued. Between $100 and $200 every five or six weeks would mysteriously appear. Couldn’t see the deposit, couldn’t see where I was off in my reconciliation (and I was a CFP - I knew how to reconcile). Eventually I gave up trying to balance my checkbook, so for all I know it’s still happening! Okay, I’m turning this party over to you! Let’s hear ways money comes to us besides our jobs, as well as some of your favorite real life stories where it’s happened to you or someone you know. Remember, repeat examples are great. When it comes to opening up doors and windows that we’ve had closed, repetition helps! (As might re-reading Vibrating Money In or playing with the Money Mantra.) And if you’re thinking this is the post you need to read rather than contribute to, I invite you to rethink. We get what we put out, so if you feel particularly ready to let some money in, the best thing you could do is get in alignment with it by recalling a time it’s happened to you! Here’s to recognizing money for what it is in our lives: whatever we choose it to be.