Clearing the Clutter --Including Debt

   

     True confession: I don’t like thinking about money. And guess what? Uncle Sam and light companies don’t care. A friend once said I’m allergic to it. It’s not that I don’t love it or  wish I had more of it, I just don’t like thinking about money for some reason, which means, by the time I have to, it’s often too late…(like the time I forgot I’d closed the bank account that had my auto-pay to the water company tied to it; nothing like having no water for a night to bring that little money matter front and center).

      Given a choice I’d much prefer to spend my days writing, pondering...washing dishes or pulling weeds if it means avoiding money matters.  After all, Jesus didn’t keep a checkbook and his apostles just up and quit their day jobs...No one mentions they worried (well, not about money anyway). A lady named Peace Pilgrim gave up money and walked across the country living on faith and the kindness of strangers. She seemed happy enough. And look at St. Francis.

      But sadly, I’m no Jesus. I’m no St. Francis and I’m not exactly dying to walk up to strangers and ask for a meal, though I’d gladly have spotted Peace a bucket of veggies if she happened down my lane.

      So what’s with my resistance, I’m asking myself? What about money (coming in or going out)  has me ranking it bottom of my priority scale. I don’t have a complete answer on this just yet, but I have a hunch it’s tied to that same gene that makes me cling to clutter…When given a choice, I go with the most sentimental of answers. Given a choice of remembering an old friend or clearing out space from the cards that friend’s given me over the years…no brainer. I choose Memory Lane. Given the choice of calling in my credit card payment or writing on a topic that comes to mind before it leaves me...(Wait. Is this a trick question? What day of the month is this?)

     But as much as my head to live in the clouds, my brain is smart enough to know if you’re gonna live on planet earth, you gotta play by earth rules.  You can only make poor choices for so long till they start backing up on you so as I see it, I have two choices: keep doing what I’m doing till something makes the change for me…or face this awareness head on and take a step –even a baby one, to rewire the neuropathways in my brain patterns so as to affect a different outcome.

    For today’s baby step I went back to my radio archives…Beyond Reason, being my favorite show I ever produced. I recalled an interview we did with a guy named Harv Eker who wrote a book called “The Millionaire Mind”. According to Harv, we each have a “set point”…a thermostat setting of sorts in our minds that becomes the default we revert back to when it comes to money. It gets set early in childhood when we’re not looking. It can come from something our parents taught us, or something we interpreted sideways, but once it’s in there, it’s the lens through which we view things, and being creatures of habit, it takes a serious awakening to rewire such long held beliefs (wrong though they may be). It’s why lottery winners eventually wind up poor again, and why Donald Trump can go bankrupt and build it all back in a year.

      In my never-ended quest to dig deeper for my own answers, I share for those perhaps spotting similar habit patterns in need of a fix, our interview. Here’s hoping you enjoy~

                                           http://beyondreason.com/mp3s/eker.mp3