Have you been struggling to create abundance in your life? Do you make just enough money to get by, wishing you could have extra to save or live more comfortably?
Author of the book “Train Your Brain: How to Build a Million Dollar Business in Record Time,” Dana Wilde (www.danawilde.com) recently held a webinar on the topic of abundance, sharing her best tips and tricks to train the brain and allow abundance to flow into our lives.
Many of us are stuck in what Wilde calls “The Cycle of Perpetual Sameness,” where the beliefs stored in our unconscious mind are keeping us from achieving our goals, including abundance. The brain’s reticular activating system continually looks for situations in the world around us to match our beliefs, and if our belief is “money is evil” or “I never have enough money” that is exactly what we will see, she shared.
“If I have the belief ‘I am shy in crowds,’ and then I walk into a crowded room, the outside world will match the inside world, and I will get sweaty palms, feel my heartbeat increase, start to sweat, and then I’ll leave,” she shared. “Then the negative self-talk starts in the conscious mind, which creates emotion and reinforces the negative beliefs.”
Most people only see incremental changes in their lives because they are stuck on the cycle of perpetual sameness – whatever they are thinking and talking about matches up in the outside world. In order to make a change, we need to start thinking and talking differently, Wilde explained.
“We must start thinking and talking different about money and abundance. Once we do this, we start reprogramming the unconscious mind, which the reticular activating system responds to, and then the outside world picture will change,” she said, listing the following steps necessary to make changes:
1. Become Aware — What are you thinking about and talking about with regards to money?
2. Deciding to Change — Notice the feelings you are having and make a decision that you want to make a change.
3. Instilling New Programming — Intentionally think different thoughts and have different conversations
4. Feeling the Positive Emotion — Notice shifts you have emotionally when starting to think about money differently.
“When you start to make these shifts in your mind around how you feel about money, and you start to change the scripts you have been saying about money, it feels like you turn on a faucet, and it can really feel like magic because the reticular activating system is now noticing different opportunities that were not on your radar prior to the mindshift,” she shared.
Understanding Abundance
During the webinar, Wilde highlighted some common, false beliefs many of us have, whether its from our parents, our culture or society, which are blocking us from abundance. These include:
Work hard and you will make money.
Get an education and you will make money.
You have to do illegal or immoral things to make money.
You can’t be spiritual and make money.
We are poor, but we are happy.
Money is limited.
I don’t care about money.
It’s selfish to want a lot of money.
If I get rich people will want a lot of things from me.
If I get rich, I’ll forget where I came from.
“Remember, money comes to you based on how you think and how you feel about it, and it starts with awareness,” Wilde said. “Start paying attention to how you are feeling and thinking about money, and sometimes it’s easier to pay attention to feelings rather than thoughts.”
This is a necessary step to take ourselves off automatic pilot when it comes to how we think and feel about money. An example would be watching to the television and hearing an ad say “Do you have credit card debt?” and getting a negative sense of dream or doom, or a pit in your stomach. That negative feeling is a sign. Why would we feel that way? What could we say to ourselves to soothe this feeling?
Wilde recommends uncovering the belief or thought causing the negative emotion and turning it around. For example, instead of “I feel I’ll never get out of debt,” one could say “I’m not happy with where I’m at now, but I have faith that I it will get better. I’m glad I’m aware of it now, and I want to let go of this negative feeling,” or “I like that change is coming to me now. I might now be right were I want to be this second but I’m on the move. I’m headed in the right direction.”
Another example she shared is sitting with friends who begin badmouthing a person who is considered rich. Maybe we become aware that we want to join in, and have a feeling of righteousness that poor people are good and rich people are bad. Once we are aware of this, we can ask ourselves, “Why am I feeling this way? Do I really believe this? Is this the message I want to match.”
“If you did nothing else — just this — you would see a drastic change in your abundance and money,” said Wilde. “To feel the hopefulness, goodness and faith, and feeling yourself open to money instead of blocking it off will produce drastic and dramatic shifts in your financial abundance.”
Exercises in Abundance
As part of the webinar, Wilde shared a number of simple exercises we can start practicing to start changing our thoughts and feelings around abundance in order to allow it to flow.
1. See the Abundance — Part of the reason people shut themselves off to abundance is a scarcity mentality, which is often seen in our culture. It’s the idea that there is not enough to go around, or we have to fight for the crumbs that are out there. This is an easy exercise to do while washing the dishes, making the bed, or any other time, she said.
“Start to think about the stuff in your house right now, and see the abundance that is already all around you,” she explained. “Most of us are overflowing with abundance. I know myself, I am shocked by the amount of stuff I have in the house. In our kitchen, we have so many drinking glasses and bowls, and we are two people here. Start to think about the amount of food we have in the house. We don’t even generally bake or eat sweets in our house, but just the variety of sugars, honey, agave, molasses, powdered sugar, white sugar, brown sugar, stevia, brown sugar syrup, or the shoes we have, or the items for cleaning the house. When I think about the books I have in my house, I have enough that I could read a book every day for 10 years.”
2. I CAN Afford That — Often we have a knee-jerk reaction when wanting to buy something. We begin to make all the excuses about our ability to afford it, such as “I can’t afford it,” or “I wish I could afford it.” Start to become aware of the dialogue when making a decision not to buy something and start changing it around.
For example, “I really like that thing, and I’m going to get that someday, but now the timing is not right,” or that is really neat, and I like it, but I think they will probably put that on sale, so I would rather wait and take a look at it down the road,” or “I really like that book, and I think its good, but I’ll pick it up at a different time because I have so many books to read right now.”
It’s about giving ourselves different reasons for not buying something, and making ourselves feel better about it. When we catch ourselves saying or thinking “I can’t afford this,” turn it around to, “The truth is I can afford this. If I really wanted it, I could make it happen. I do want this, and it is going to come into my world, just not today, but I look forward to this coming in.”
3. Let it Flow — Similar to the concept of tithing, which is giving a percentage of what comes into our lives to support a church or organization, we can do this in small ways that can give us the feeling of power and abundance. For example, in a restaurant leaving an extra $5 tip.
“When you do this, you are letting it flow, and you start to get the feeling, ‘I’m rich, and I can afford to give more,’” Wilde noted.
4. Money as Appreciation — Begin to give money a different definition and start to think of it as a symbol of appreciation. We can give an extra tip to a waitress because we appreciate her, and we pay our electric bill because we appreciate having electricity.
“Money is a form of appreciation, and I am appreciating where my money is going, and I’m appreciating that I’m able to give it,” said Wilde. “Whenever I give a tip or pay for something I say, ‘I love being rich. I love that I’m able to give money this way.’”
6. Have it NOW — When we make a purchase, what are we really buying? Why do we buy things or want to buy things? We are really buying the image of who we want to be, or the lifestyle we want, said Wilde. So why not have that feeling now?
“Rather than longing for and thinking about your life in the future, how can you have the feeling of that now. Let’s say you want to live around trees and nature but you are in the city. What can you do to have those feelings now? Can you put plants on your porch, or plants in a room and sit there for a few minutes a day? Or find a park or be out in nature a couple times a day? How can you have it now?”
If someone wants to go to Paris, he or she can get a poster of Paris and put it on the wall to study the streets and avenues, or buy a book on how to speak French. If someone wants a bigger house, they can redo sections to make them seem bigger, or find pictures for the wall to make it seem like they are already there.
“Your brain stores beliefs about money, and your reticular activating system spends all day, every day, matching up those beliefs,” Wilde said. “You change it by starting to become aware of the thoughts and feelings you have around money and abundance, and start talking and thinking differently. Implement these exercises and you will start to feel abundance coming into your life, and the reticular activating system will start matching it up.”
For more information on Dana Wilde, visit www.danawilde.com.