by Sasha James
Moving on, I would like to ask you about the intensity of those feelings you just defined. Try to define the approximate intensity of what you feel on a scale of 1 to 10. If 10 is the highest possible intensity (like ‘I cannot take it anymore’) and 1 is the weakest (like ‘almost nothing there’)—how high is it? Is it a 5? Is it a 7? Or maybe a 3?
Just take your best guess.
Write down the emotion, the feeling, and whatever you can hear as it runs through your head. Write it down; get it on paper. These are usually quite negative feelings, but do not worry about noticing it, acknowledging it, and writing it down because it will serve your best purpose. Take a minute or two to do that now. (There is no sense in moving on before you do this.) Dig a little bit deeper. You have it? If so, let’s move on.
You see, every time you think about your savings, below the level of conscious thought, patterns can pop into our head multiple times a day or week, especially when it is time to pay expenses. What blasts through your nervous system and what runs through your head automatically, without you ever questioning that concept? This is what happens within your mind; I just want you to stop and think about that for a moment. Does that give you a resourceful, empowered state of mind? When you’re feeling those emotions, are you feeling enthusiastic and focused on your goals and dreams? Or are you experiencing the ‘fight or flight response’ and everything that goes with it? (In case you have read clinical descriptions, you would know that this fight-or-flight response narrows your thinking, reduces your resiliency, and prevents you from accessing ideas and inspiration, etc.)
No one enjoys being in a constant state of fight-or-flight response. No one likes spending time with that amount of negative intensity. Think about that for a while. I brought up that topic because I want you to consider having a little more self-compassion right now regarding why your savings might not be exactly where you want them to be; you are probably pretty hard on yourself. Just give yourself a little bit of compassion and understanding. This is why you do not spend enough time creating priorities or strategies that can help; you do not invest needed energy, or seek ideas that can grow your savings account. If your programming says it’s impossible to save a lot of money, why would you even try to save it? When you think it’s painful or useless or unholy, you won’t spend any time on it. Here is your first “ah-ha” moment of this process: give yourself compassion and know that when and only when you shift this obstacle, miracles are possible.
Now, what about that third piece for savings? This may not be relevant to you, but it may be important. When you look at the amount of money in your savings account, is there anything that you’re suddenly remembering from the past? Has anything affected your savings today? Write down any reaction like, “It still makes me sad/mad” or “It still feels like such a loss,” or “If that hadn’t happened, I would have so much more money in my savings account.”
Sometimes, an event you remember has nothing to do with money, but it’s connected with a feeling. Very often, when people look at their savings, they will feel anxious: “OMG, what if something happens, I have no savings!” That can also bring with it a feeling of sadness or loss, an emotion like this: “I never get to feel entirely safe.” Sometimes, a traumatic event from the past involved a sadness or a great loss that made you feel like you lost your security; ever since then, you’ve never really felt safe. Some people have not felt safe since childhood. Any kind of traumatic event that dramatically changed your life as a child (death of a parent, loss of job, etc) can be connected with this aspect of money called savings. It is most important to understand that savings is both the real amount of money we have, AND an energetic metaphor that translates into is security and safety, a feeling of “I can sleep peacefully now.” It may sound a little crazy but when you analyze this, when you really think about it, you’ll understand. Savings is a very specific aspect of money; when we have enough of it, we feel safe, and when we don’t, we feel very insecure.
Write down any past event that you remember and that fits the previous description. When you think about your savings, it really makes sense that you’re feeling everything that you feel right now. You may be feeling anxiety and sadness, loss and frustration, or anger and frustration; whatever you’re feeling, it’s a reaction to seeing the amount of your savings. (If it’s elation, you are blessed!) Despite the reality that is currently manifested in your life, I ask you to understand that the reason your savings are exactly as they are, is because these feelings were there first. You were already wired and programmed with this habitual way of thinking and feeling: “It’s not enough. I don’t feel safe.” That was already there first, at a very unconscious level. It is a clinically proven fact; for those who like to research, feel free to read through materials on the Stress Project (http://stressproject.org/scientific-research/randomized-control-trials/).
The feelings and the internal wiring of our belief system represent the ‘clothing’ of our manifested money. We are behaving, thinking, and acting in a way to match our subconscious wiring that determines how things should be and will be for “people like us” (my family, my upbringing, and my social class), the way the world works, and the way money works. Please stay with this idea for a second, because it is important. We received our wiring, and that literally created our money to match these received concepts which matches that wiring!
YES, THIS IS TERRIFYING—FOR MANY OF YOU, IT MAY ALSO BE SHOCKING.
However, this is why clarity is so wonderful. The start of great changes happen once you realize, “My gosh, we can change everything!” Once you see the root of the problem that has caused you so much suffering, and even more importantly, when you learn how to use this powerful tool of Tapping, all of a sudden you understand how to create a whole new reality in your savings. It’s simply amazing. It’s powerful.
We just have to get through the difficult part of seeing it and getting through all these strong emotions. The upcoming process of shifting and accepting them will move them, and through Tapping, we can get to the other side. And I promise you, that’s what we will do.
Debt
We can move out of the second element; though it will be faster, in a sense it will also get worse because we’re going to work with your amount of debt. In case you’re one of those lucky ones who do not have any debt, just visualize anyone else who has debt, and feel grateful that this important aspect of money is missing from your Personal Wealth Blueprint. Serious issues are hidden within this aspect of money for many people, but even if you have no debt, it might be worthwhile to work through this issue. Perhaps you have constant anxiety about debt, or you’re super debt-averse and you can’t tolerate any debt at all. Any area where you have a big emotional response, you will want to work on that. I know people who have no debt, but they’re so afraid of having debt that it stops them from even getting into good or necessary debt, because they are panicking to pay everything off. They live a very hand-to-mouth form of existence. They have exchanged debt with anxiety about having debt. In many cases, that can be the same problem or even worse.
Write down how much debt you have. The real, total amount of debt.
What we are after is troublesome debt, like credit card debt or any other bad debt. Do not necessarily count your good debt at this point, like a mortgage or a necessary business loan. This is the place to summarize the amount of debt that is triggering an emotional response that you don’t feel good about. For example, some people feel fantastic about their school loans because the loans allow them to work on a job with great pay. On other hand, some people feel extremely upset about their school loans—they feel tricked, cheated, and treated unfairly.
What piece of your debt is upsetting to you? We’re looking to find the yucky stuff and work with that, so take a minute to list those amounts on a piece of paper. Notice if you’re already starting to have a feeling about it.
Now, write down any feelings or emotions that are blasting through your head while looking at th
at number in front of you. Are there any words that you’re saying about yourself, about money and wealth, about the world, about the way things are? What words or phrases are running through your head as you look at the total amount of your debt? Be introspective here, as much you can. These ideas are sometimes hard to catch since this works on autopilot and you don’t even question it.
These are some common examples:
“No matter what I do, I can never get ahead.”
“What I do is never enough.”
“I’m a loser.”
“I’m a failure.”
“It’s impossible to get out of this.”
“The cards are stacked against me.”
“It’s going to be hard if even possible…”
“I’ll never get out from under this.”
“How could I even come to this?”
These kinds of thoughts move through our heads on a daily basis. Just like our savings, often anxiety is the emotion immediately triggered, with debt as the number-one reason for the emotion of shame (or embarrassment, a more socially accepted form of shame). You can be sure that shame is one of the most powerfully negative emotions that you could ever possibly experience. Seriously, what’s worse than shame? Panic at life-threatening levels can be extremely uncomfortable, but shame is even more damaging since we experience it a lot, sometimes all day long, multiple times a day, depending on how you’ve been programmed to feel shame.
As with savings, how much time and energy do we spend on solving this issue in an effective way? We know that there are amazing financial advisors, planners, CPAs, and accountants who can help; there are books and strategies on debt reduction that can help. But consider, from the amount of your energy, focus, and attention that you bring to your day job, how much do you think you spend on actually dealing with your own debt? Especially if every time you think about it, that debt triggers a wall of shame and really negative inner talk.
CAUTION: While considering money that we owe to others, we are usually so negative and hard on ourselves! I want to ask you to please, show yourself a tiny bit of compassion right now. Allow a tiny bit of compassion and understanding that you are not in a resourceful state. Margaret explains (and I share that experience) that when working through this process with financial advisors, CPAs, and all sorts of money experts (i.e. bankers who are incredibly brilliant at advising other people about their debt), toward their own debt, they’re often stuck in a disaster zone. They get busy avoiding it, they get frozen in fear, they’re in shame—believe me, it’s not just you who goes through negative cycles about money.
Lastly, this can be a big block: Has a past event really affected your debt, something that causes you look back and say, “If that hadn’t happened…”?
As coaches, we have found that, if there is a connected trauma to debt, it often involves some sort of betrayal, something that you’ve never forgiven yourself or someone else for. In any case, you haven’t forgiven yourself, because when you look back over your history, it affected you financially. Maybe that was a bad decision or something about what you are saying to yourself: “I should’ve known better. I was an idiot. I should’ve been smarter.” That is very common when people look at their debt.
It may be similar within the courthouse inside of your head, the place where you are judging yourself every day and saying, “I was an idiot, I was so stupid,” etc. When people are stuck in that mode of being unable to be forgiven (and people can remain there for 20 or up to 50 years), they haven’t had a good way to process that. Tapping is an incredible way to process a past event. We actually work in-depth with Financial Trauma issues; my next book will cover this subject in a deeper way, but at this point, you will get a way to release and shift what is needed at the start.
Now, let’s say you don’t have a good way to process it so that it is cleared out from your system, so that you can come back to self-compassion, self-forgiveness, and understanding. You need to get rid of all the programs running on repeat mode in these ways: “I was an idiot. I should’ve known better. I should have done better. It’s all my fault. Every time I look at my debt, I think, ‘I’m an idiot, I’m a loser, I’m a failure.’” This translates into, “I deserve to be punished. I deserve what I’m getting.” These programs need to go.
I’ve seen people hold onto debt unconsciously, with all of their actions lining up in an elegant, sophisticated way to ensure that they always remain in debt; it’s self-punishment because they’ve never forgiven themselves. I’m going to ask again: Every time you look at your debt, are you using this debt as self-punishment? Or are you using this debt as a reminder that you were wronged in the past, and you’ve never been able to make it right? Just like the savings account, debt is dollars and cents in the real world; it’s also an energetic or emotional metaphor for punishing yourself or punishing someone else by saying, “Look what you did to me.” This is really important to see and understand.
We often ask people, “When you look at your debt, how would you finish this sentence? “That means I’m ‘____________________’.”
People almost always fill in the blank with something dark and negative, such as, “a failure, a loser.” In translation, “This debt means I’m always failing, or not good enough, or a loser.” It’s never positive. So if that’s how people have lived their lives, if that’s the habitual self-talk coming out in them, of course they create debt because it’s a self-fulfilling loop of punishment. It is filled with phrases like these: “I should have known better; I should be smarter,.” It actually means, “I need to learn a lesson. I need this punishment to remind me—to be my lesson.”
Please, look at your debt again and ask yourself if you have suffered enough, if you have tortured yourself enough over it. Now please, get ready to move forward with energy. Take a breath and move into a new chapter where you don’t need to be punished every time the money topic appears.
Income
As you will see, the next two topics are very closely related. We are switching gears! As soon as these are covered, we will apply Tapping in a very customized and personalized way. But before moving on to income, let’s go back to your Personal Wealth Blueprint or piece of paper; write down a ballpark amount of your monthly expanses. Now, write down your monthly earnings, your income. It’s important to find out how much is left after paying bills. If you are not sure, simply write down your best guess.
Now, stay on that page for a few moments, and look at this amount of money. What are you saying and feeling about this amount of money; what comes up? In this step, people will often hear, “It’s not enough, it’s just not enough!” If you are hearing something like that or anything similar, can you describe the feeling you have? Check your income number again, or what is left of it. Do you feel, “It is NOT enough?” Say the words out loud; “IT IS NOT ENOUGH” (or as you hear it in your head). Repeat it again. What are the feelings and emotions? Capture everything you hear in your head, the feelings and emotions streaming through your system now.
Also, if you start remembering something from your past that’s connected with earning, take note of it; something that made you feel strong negative emotions may indicate a connected trauma. That may be anything that made you feel ashamed, sad, or scared; perhaps a parent had a devastating event happen to their income. Many people remember life-altering instances, such as a parent’s financial crisis, relocation, or something as small as parent(s) stopping their allowance. These are just a few examples.
What shows up right here and now is unconscious programming around your sense of value and worth, based on your family upbringing, tradition, or origin. Phrases like “People like us,” “In our family,” or “This is how much we earn” equates with “This is how much we’re worth. We’re the Joneses or the Millers; we’re not those people over there who earn a lot of money.”
Other phrases might include, “We work hard, we get screwed, the government and/or the tax man is against us—the little guys.” Thes
e sets of beliefs really depend on your upbringing and early impressions related to earnings, business, and wealth. Some beliefs would keep you stuck on certain income levels for years, or make you spend more than you should; some would push you to earn the same or even less than your parents, living paycheck to paycheck. Because you see the holes and mismatch in the reality around you, your thoughts might shift in this direction: “I want to earn well,” “I need more money,” “I have to advance my business,” or “I should have more from life.” Your thoughts may get even louder in the next section regarding Income Goals, because that’s like saying, “Now I’m going to go much higher.” At an income level, we see the pushback from our programming about what is possible for us to earn and what we deserve, based on our inner programming about our value. Often when we look at our income, when it’s not enough, we hear things in our head; we feel anxiety, or sometimes a sadness or a frustration, like “No matter what I do…”
Sometimes the self-talk will sound like this: “I’m not earning enough. I’m not enough. I’m not valuable enough. People don’t value me enough.”
Income Goal
As we switch over to this Income Goal section, we turn up the heat a bit; that’s why this most necessary section holds great value. Every single one of you would say, “I would really love to double or even triple my income, Sasha!” In reply, I would say that it sounds good in theory but as a matter of fact, the second we write it on paper, it starts to feel differently. So, let’s do that. Get your paper and write down a big goal for your income. What would you love to earn? For this purpose, I don’t want you to break yourself stretching toward some huge, unreasonable (for you) income goal like $2 million or $5 million, at least not right away. The best thing is to write the next number just above where you are now, so that it feels realistic despite being a step up. Maybe that next income goal is to double your current monthly earnings. Make it one step up, not all the way to the multi-millions, because there’s something about reaching toward the millions that creates a feeling of disassociation for most people; you won’t really feel anything about it, neither will it serve your purpose.
