Today’s task:
Believe in yourself. (And meet with your financial advisor.)
Today was kind of magical in a lot of ways. Between spending almost an hour shoveling snow this morning to treating myself to a special breakfast to ending my evening with Joe Dispensa’s inspiring words, I feel like I’m setting myself up for some exciting times ahead.
I’m going to need to listen to this video at least three more times to really process and reflect on what Joe says when he talks about our ability to change our reality by changing our personality. And that personality is formed by beliefs, which are formed by unconscious thought patterns. This is all stuff I know, and that I’ve heard time and time again from speakers previously, but I think the sheer number of case studies just makes your jaw drop. For me, I literally jumped up and down with excitement in my apartment as I thought about this application to my life – and what I hope you will also take away and apply to your own!
To move from lack to abundance and operate from a place of love, you have to start from a place of gratitude.
It has to do with the different neurons that are fired when you start to take stock of what you have, who you are, who you are surrounded by, all the little things that add up.
Once you’ve established a foundation of gratitude, he shared that falling in love with yourself and your own life are precursors to falling in love with anything else. The most abundant people give what they have away. They are incredibly generous and possess a certain contentment with what they have. They’re so in love with their partner that they don’t feel like they have anywhere else to go. So what does it look like when we are older and start to reflect on our younger years?
In reflecting on Joe Dispensa’s own life, coming close to turning 60, he described that something he would have done differently twenty years ago was to relax more, let go, and have fun. One of my favorite quotes from a dear friend is “Además de tener trabajo y salud, todo es ganancia”, which translates to aside from having work and health, everything else is profit/extra. I love how this phrase sums up the importance of gratitude and focusing on the things that really matter. By viewing everything else aside from work and health as a plus instead of necessity, you have a deeper appreciation for all of it.
Let’s bring things back to today’s task: Believe in yourself. And meet with your financial advisor.
As I described in an earlier post, there’s a big difference between a financial coach and a financial advisor. I met with my financial advisor today to put my investments into a Roth IRA.
A Roth IRA is basically an individual retirement account that’s good for entrepreneurs that don’t have an employer-sponsored 401K. According to Charles Schwab (because yes, I still have to look this stuff up), your contributions and earnings can grow tax-free, and you can withdraw them tax-free and penalty-free after age 59½ and once the account has been open for five years. There’s also no mandatory withdrawals, which are required as part of having a traditional IRA.
The reason I knew that this was the best next step for me was because of so many blog posts and podcast episodes I’ve listened to over the years where people who had started their own business talked about their investment strategy. The thing that they always said was “Step 1 – Get your investments into a Roth IRA.” So that’s what I did today! And man, was that a doozy. I feel like my brain was fried by noon just because of all the finance lingo. It’s seriously another world when you start talking stocks, bonds, ETF, core bonds, etc. I have so much to learn. And I’m so glad that I’m paying someone else who knows a lot more than me to help me set all of this up.
Of course, I’m disappointed that I can’t get the presentation on “Here’s all the green funds that your money is going to be invested in, the women-owned companies, and the social mission funds” but right now putting my investments into specific stocks that align with those values is going to have to take a backseat for the near-term. As soon as I’m in a more stable financial position (within 6 months for sure), I’m going to evaluate whether or not I want to stay with the same company to manage my investments. But for now, it’s fine.
One action item that I had from the meeting was to set up a call with my credit union and see about consolidating my funds into one money market account instead of having them split up three ways for all of my different savings goals. I like seeing them individually, because I can keep track of them better. If it was all one lump sum, I think it would be less motivating. So pro tip to all you readers out there – get your savings into a money market account, pronto! It’s basically a savings account that earns a higher interest rate that you’d get in your average savings account.
Lastly, I want to touch on this notion of believing in yourself.
Joe Dispensa’s interview (I’m only 90 minutes into this four-hour video) really hit home the idea that there’s no reason to stress out, that I should think about this whole money situation as a game (AKA have more fun!), and that the fantastical things that I’d love to experience in my life are only possible if I 1) imagine them and 2) believe that I’m capable of experiencing them.
To Be Magnetic’s theory would probably be along the lines of increasing your sense of self-worth to match the energetics of whatever you’re calling in.
In both cases, success relies on meditation as a core medium through which people can access altered states of consciousness. The reason is that meditation causes you to step out of the static of life. Push pause on the chaos of the situations in which you find yourself on a daily basis. By getting yourself to transition to theta brainwaves, you allow yourself a deeper rest than when you go to bed at night. Crazy, right?
I hope by now if you’ve been following this challenge since Day 1 that you recognize the importance of cultivating your own meditation practice. And not as a way to escape from the pain or ignore big things that are going on around you, but as Emily Fletcher would say, to ‘get better at life’.
So what does believing in yourself actually look like in practice?
- Taking chances. Going forward even if you’re unsure of the outcome.
- Setting bigger goals for yourself. What would the 10X version of what you’ve laid out for your future look like if you gave yourself permission to dream that big?
- Being honest with yourself and saying the truth, even when it hurts. Our fear of how people will react to what we have to say is one of the biggest reasons why we play small. I can’t help but think back to conversations that have come out of therapy and how I worked myself up in my head before I talked to someone else, and then when it happened, the reaction was lame and not at all what I expected. Trust that what you need to say needs to be heard. Of course, you should be kind, considerate, compassionate, empathetic, and more, but you should also look out for yourself and ask for what you need. Tell people when you’re sad. Don’t hold that sh*t in. It’s not serving anyone.
- Celebrate the present. Enjoy every moment that you have with the people around you. Laugh hysterically. Find ways to cry tears of joy. Make the people around you smile and giggle. Lift others up with a hug. Because you never know when that opportunity won’t be there anymore. People come in and out of our lives all the time. Sometimes it’s by choice, and oftentimes it’s not. So be the one that others admire because you love deeply and aren’t afraid to show those around you that you care.
I believe in you. You have a big heart and you will change the world, even if it’s just your small corner of it.
Today’s resources to keep you inspired:
How To REPROGRAM Your Subconscious Mind To MANIFEST Your Dream Future! | Joe Dispenza
