Most people probably don’t know that my educational background, and first love, is health, fitness and nutrition. I delight in using the knowledge that I know to create an environment INSIDE of my skin that provides me with the most optimum living experience I can create.
My fitness background includes the usual aspects: aerobics, weights and stretching. I taught all of these activities in my ‘former’ life, but when I started skipping down the path of “financial literacy for kids”, I bowed out of the physical fitness industry in favor of financial fitness. I turned my focus to better equipping kids and teens to handle their money.
As I have traveled along this path, I discovered the beauty of another ‘fitness’ activity that not only reconnected me to my first love but has provided me with invaluable financial lessons in the process. The activity is yoga.
With the introduction of yoga into my life, and in particular, a class I take here in Santa Barbara with Eddi Ellner of Yoga Soup, my eyes have opened wider to the financial metaphors available to us through the practice of yoga.
Let me explain…
Yoga is referred to as a practice because there IS no getting it RIGHT (because there IS no right). Yoga practice has us remember to breathe into all things…essentially all of the beautiful shapes our bodies can rest or move into and out of.
With yoga, you are constantly adjusting yourself…again, not because there is any RIGHT to adjust into but more the experience of being in the moment; breathing, moving your should blades slightly down, breathing, shifting the weight onto the outside of your foot, breathing…you get the picture. And all the while you’re noticing things that you might not have noticed if you hadn’t slowed down to concentrate on breathing and making adjustments.
FINANCIAL ADJUSTMENTS
During my foray into financial education and coaching over the years, what I notice most when working with adults, is their money habits…the habits they do and the habits they don’t do.
I remember hearing this wonderful distinction at one of Peak Potential’s great seminars. Harv Eker told us we have two types of habits…habits we do and habits we don’t do and that we’re in the habit of not doing the habits that might actually move us forward financially.
Let’s explore the idea of financial adjustments to see how they relate to our often unsupportive and unguided financial habits. Here’s what I want you to do…
The Latte Factor
Identify a habit that you normally do with money. This could be a physical behavior habit like spending money on coffee every morning (that you could have made at home a lot cheaper) or a limiting thought habit thinking you’ll never have more than enough money to live on. Whatever it is, see if you can imagine yourself in that habit. Feel what you feel in the midst of it. Identify the thoughts that go with it.
Next, take a few deep breaths and consider how you might ‘adjust’ this physical behavior or thought habit to better serve you. If this exercise is becoming a little confusing, stay with me anyway. I’ll walk you through the examples.
BEHAVIOR ADJUSTMENT
Let’s say you adjust the number of days you buy coffee from every morning to three times a week. At $3 a shot (no pun intended), you went from spending $60 a month on coffee to $36 a month…you save $24 a month.
Now, for people who haven’t learned how to look at the time value of money, $24 may not seem like a lot of moolah. But that’s $288 per year! If you invested that $24 a month for 30 years at even a measly interest rate/return of 5%, you’d have $19,974.21 in your financial cup instead of nothing which is what you’ll have if you keep buying coffee every day.
Imagine if eventually you adjusted to two days a week and then one day a week as a treat. Imagine the money you’d have by investing that money instead.
Financial Thoughts
THOUGHT ADJUSTMENT
Now let’s look at how to adjust that unsupportive thought you are in the habit of thinking…the one that convinces you daily (perhaps even hourly) that you’ll never be able to really have the money you want for yourself (or whatever your particular thought habit is).
The thing that would be helpful, once you’ve put yourself into that head space, is to inquire into where and when you first started thinking that thought. I promise you it’s not YOUR original thought so just know that it came from someone else or something that happened to you earlier in life that you misinterpreted.
If you can nail down exactly where it came from, great. If you can’t, no biggy. You can still adjust this thought and here’s how:
First, state the thought out loud.
Next, write it down.
Now, write the positive version of it. In this case, I have more than enough money to live on.
Next, turn that positive statement into a question like this: “WHY do I have more than enough money to live on?” This is called an AFFORMATION and is a question form of an affirmation that many people are already familiar with. This process was created by dear friend, Noah St. John. Click here to learn all about this powerful form of mind transformation and manifestation.
Finally, write this question down, print it on sticky notes and put it in several places around your home and ask yourself this question as often as possible.
End Result: You slowly move from habitually having a nonsupportive thought to habitually having an empowering thought which, by the way, often brings you the very thing you were blocking out in the first place. Try it!
When you begin to see how making small adjustments in your financial habits have a huge impact on the direction you’re traveling and where you end up, you can begin to look for possible adjustments in everything you do.
Financial Adjustments
THE MOST TRICKY FINANCIAL ADJUSTMENT
For most people, the most challenging adjustment to make concerns a core belief and that’s the belief that there’s actually something we must do, be, have or go to ‘in order to’ be happy, successful, rich, free, loved, etc. ad nauseum.
The whole point of yoga (or so it seems) is to learn to love and accept what is. Be in the here and now and make it all OK. Just as the Buddha taught that peace is in the now and that nonattachment is what relieved humans from suffering, practicing the ability to let your financial situation be perfectly OK where it is AND with each adjustment you make in the future, is the ultimate financial adjustment.
FINANCIAL ADJUSTMENT AND CHIROPRACTIC
You might be asking yourself why I didn’t relate financial adjustments to chiropractic adjustments. This is why…
Chiropractic adjustments, for the most part, are forced on you by someone else that you’ve empowered to be the expert over your body. What I’M talking about are adjustments that start on the inside, initiated by YOUR wants and desires to be in a different financial situation, do more than you’re currently doing financially, have more experiences in life that require money and create life the way you dream it can be.
By looking at the millions upon millions of possible financial adjustments that can positively support your life, AND breathing into and loving exactly what is right now, you take control over your experience of life. And as I am prone to saying, THIS is what financial freedom is all about!
For more information on teaching your children and yourself about money, please visit our website at www.creativewealthintl.org.