Imagine you really want to be in an amazing relationship. Lots of my tribe members have had that experience of wanting to find Mr. (or Ms.) right and struggling to put in the effort, or open themselves up to deeply connecting with the one.
So you have this desire for this amazing prince charming. And at long last – there he is! You can hardly believe it, you know exactly what you want, and you know it exists!
And you proceed to put dates with him on the calendar, and every time the date gets close, something happens. Mom needs a ride to the doctor. The cat gets sick. Your client REALLY, REALLY needs you. Mr. Right can wait.
Yes Mr. Right, as much as he is magnetically drawn to you, really can’t wait. Because he knows he’s got a purpose in this lifetime, and if he stops flowing, he stops growing. He would LOVE to spend some time with you. Roll around with you, and make your life better and easier and more luxurious. But he can’t wait for you to get around to him.
Now, imagine Mr. Right is your money. It’s the money that is just dying to come into your life if you would just pay attention to it. It wants to see you have everything you want and then some. It wants you to be wrapped in luxury.
But it only goes where energy goes because money can’t stagnate. It can’t wait around for you to make room in your life to deal with it. And if you don’t deal with it, it will stop flowing. Period.
You’ve got to make a date with your money.
You’ve got to court it and love it and give it attention, get to know and understand it, and allow it to serve you and make you happy. Just like Mr. Right. And if we think about the idea that ‘who you’re being anywhere is who you’re being everywhere,’ your inability to date your money just may reveal an inability to nurture your primary relationship as well!
Just like the man or woman of your dreams, money requires intimacy. And intimacy requires time.
Confessions of a Money Avoider
I hate dating my money. I just want it to be there when I need it and not make problems the rest of the month. I love to talk about it, I love to spend it, I love to make it and I love to share it. I hate to sit down and really get too up close and personal with it, and I really hate when it slows me down.
Now, as an entrepreneur committed to high consciousness, I also hate saying that I hate it. What if the money hears me and decides to go away?? J
But I need you to know. As much as I love money flowing through my business, it is very hard for me to take time to sit down and look at it and plan for it make decisions about what to do next with based on information gathered at our last ‘date.’ I much prefer to manifest it and trust the Universe.
And manifesting and trusting works, mind you. It does. For entrepreneurs in the beginning of your business, I highly recommend that strategy. It allows you to create things you never thought possible.
And as you get further along in business, I’m still a fan of using your powers of manifestation on a regular basis. You just also want to combine them with math. And time and attention.
We’re all taught to spend money (well, most of us). But we aren’t taught to spend TIME on MONEY. And that’s what’s really needed. And I’ve had to WORK at this skill and really work at my patience to be able to spend time on managing money, not just making it.
How to Have a Money Date
Schedule time in your calendar once a week to look at your money.
Look at your contracted funds that have come in, and the ones that are scheduled to come in.
Look at all of your bank balances and credit card balances.
Look at your upcoming expenses that are scheduled.
Reflect on expenses you’d like to incur and budget them in. If you’re not sure, budget them in buckets. E.g. I’d like to attend an event next month – I’ll put in the travel budget and trust that the right event will appear.
Even if you don’t have much going on – not a lot of contracted revenue and not a lot of planned expenses, look at all of it. Don’t think about it as a purely practical activity, like paying bills. Think about it as an energetic activity, as in sending good energy to your money stuff, making space for more of it to come in.
Developing this time habit early on is declaring to the Universe what you value, and you’ll be ready and prepared to budget and manage your money when you start to have lots of it. Or you’ll be like me, undoing bad habits years in the making while lots of money is flowing. OK, Truth, it’s still kind of fun. But not sustainable, and that’s the life we’re really after.