Mind Over Matter

Lately I have a read a lot of finance/entrepreneur books, and one common theme is that the right attitude is critical if you want to succeed or build wealth.

Now, I have always thought of myself as a pro-active, positive person, but I have come to realise that I have a bit of a "struggle-street" mentality when it comes to money. I never have as much as I'd like to have. We cover bills, but that's about it.

So I set about to change all this.

On the first day of this year, I started this blog, and since then I have rediscovered my passion for writing. Being a mother, I have put my family first, and forgot about myself, but this one little thing, is something that I do for me. The enjoyment I get from this, has spilled over into the rest of my life, and I find myself much more energetic, passionate and alive.

I think this has made it easier, to change my thinking. I started getting up in the morning, with a conviction that good things were going to happen today.

And you know what?

Good things did happen!!

Every single day, since I started this "experiment", good things have happened to me. One day, I may have one or two new followers on my blog, or even a new idea of how I could improve on something. This may seem miniscule to someone else, but this is exciting for me, because it is another step in the direction that I want my life to take. I notice it, and I feel thankful.

One day, an old work colleague, called out of the blue, and said she had a heap of second-hand clothes from her grandsons to give to me. My son and I had a wonderful time going through all the "new" clothes. Not only that, but I now have more than enough for my boys, and will give some away to others.

The day before yesterday, I had to ring the insurance company for another matter, but while I was on the phone, I noticed something on our account, and asked about it, and I got $45 off our insurance premium. Not bad for a 10 minute phone call. Also, that day I got a great idea for a new blog I'm starting up, that I'm really passionate about.

Yesterday, my husband brought home a letter from work, to say that the unions had negotiated a 10% pay rise over the next three years. But not only that, it was effective from July last year, so he will be back-paid from then.

This morning I got up, and went to do some banking online. When I had a look at our account history, I saw that $18.70 had been deposited as share dividends. So what, you think? Well, these shares were given to my husband last year ($1000 worth of company shares) because their workplace had performed so well in the previous financial year. So, in effect, we earnt $18.70 without any extra effort on our part, which is really exciting to me.

Do you see what I mean? Every single day, good things have happened. Maybe they are only little things..

But, from little things, big things grow.

Obviously, you could apply this to any area of your life: your relationship with your spouse, your kids, your career, anything, but for the purposes of this article I have concentrated on finances.

Now, you may argue that these things would have happened anyway, whether I believed or not.

Maybe.

But who cares?

Because I have grown a thankful spirit along the way. Instead of worrying over what I don't have, I have concentrated on the good things that are happening for me. And once I began looking for them, there are so many...

A book that really explained this so well for me, was Life Beyond Limits by Rik Schnabel. About how like attracts like. If you had a guitar next to another guitar, and they were both tuned exactly the same, and you plucked one of the strings on one guitar, the same string on the other guitar would also vibrate sound. Why? Because they are both at the same vibration, and like attracts like. If you are an angry person, you will probably attract people around you who are also angry people, and you will all feed off each other's anger.

(A quick note, the book mentioned above is real little ripper of a book, and I'm currently scouring around online for a copy to buy, because I had to reluctantly take my copy back to the library and pay $3.20 in overdue fees...Am finding it a bit hard to get hold of this book, so be warned. Well worth the effort, though. I would consider this book one of those rare life-changing books.)

I think one of the key things is gratitude. You will notice a lot of new-age books regularly refer to "the Universe". Personally, I think this is just a politically correct way of saying "God". Every night, before I go to sleep, I remember to say Thank You to God, who is the Giver of all things. Why on earth would He give me more of anything, whilever I am busy concentrating on what I'm lacking?

I realise some people will have tuned out once they got to the last paragraph and read the word "God". Maybe they thought, "Aha. So there's the catch".

So be it. I can only write what I believe. To my mind, it's all interwoven, and you can't separate the cause from the effect.

For some further interesting reading on this subject, have a look at Steve Pavlina's Million Dollar Experiment. You can even join in and participate in the experiment, yourself.