09 Dec Money Flows Like Water: Build Your Channels
Enjoy: Click on the video for a guided meditation + discussion of points raised in this blog post.
Money Flows Like Water
Money flows like water: build your channels! Money is like water in lots of ways. We “spend money like water,” for example. But we also want to contain it. And we criticize ourselves for spending, and for not keeping enough for things we need.
But trying too hard to contain money leads to hoarding and stagnation. Wasting money without regard for what is most precious to you is also a problem.
Money, like any energy, wants to move.
Build Your Channels
Building our channels to receive more money is a mostly unknown, undiscussed aspect of working with money. Plus, most of us are so self-critical that we believe we have no right to receive more.
You can receive as much as you are willing to take responsibility for!
Also, most solutions to having more money are pretty boring: spend less, make more, save more.(Those things, within reason, are important.) But they don’t compel us because they are not very interesting. They ignore the emotional side of money.
The decisions we make and actions we take with money often don’t make logical sense. They come out of an emotional place within us. That includes our gut, instinctual place that is often driven by some of the things I’ll talk about below. We can use our awareness to change all of these things.
We can tell we have overly narrow money channels if we frequently feel restricted, limited, or constricted by the amount of money flowing into our lives.
The ordinary, seldom-successful approaches of “make more money,” “save more,” “spend less” again completely ignore the emotional place we make many/most money decisions from. They are boring and uncompelling. They don’t increase our ability to receive, and the channels through which we receive.
For that, we need RAISING CLARITY approaches, which are emotional, spiritual, energetic, and subtle.
In essence, we can use our emotions to work for us, we can get very, very far changing our money decisions and actions!
Five Ideas for How to Build Your Channels
We adopt money behaviors which allow money to flow and channel it to our purposes. We can be peaceful when we notice we are allowing it to move through and out of our channels. Giving, spending–these are ok! They help money flow.
The problem comes when your channels for receiving aren’t great enough and long-lasting enough to suit your purposes.
(That’s a problem I help with.)
Great and Long-lasting Channels
Long-lasting Channels
Long-lasting means holding onto money long enough to make use of it.
he problematic opposite of this behavior can look like what we call the “Fool” in moneycoaching, someone who spends money as soon as they receive it.
But there is a peaceful middle ground. Without hoarding, we can keep hold of money long enough to prosper, to profit, to build up something or build up to something we really want.
I have a very strong Fool archetype and I realized only recently that this easy come, easy go attitude shows a hatred for money. It’s easy to hate money; it is connected with so many ills. But even something toxic deserves respect. Perhaps especially so—like an animal we learn to treat with respect so it doesn’t bite us.
Money can bite us; it can also serve us. It especially serves us when we hold onto it long enough and hold onto enough of it to do something with rather than pissing it away on things we ourselves acknowledge are insignificant to us—wasteful. This can look like belt-tightening and saving–but it doesn’t have to mean we do those things hatefully toward ourselves. Again, balance.
Great Channels
Here are five ways to build your channels. I discuss each of them as well in the video accompanying this post.
1. Look at our family of origin history with money.
How we identify is also how we identify with money. If money was hated, or in short supply in our family, chances are we’ve inherited that view and will be hard-pressed to change it until we dis-identify with that aspect of our family history. The same is true with great wealth in our family of origin: if it was a source of self-hatred, we may have decided to dis-identify with money as well as our family of origin! Or we may identify ourselves as should-be wealthy and feel less-than if we are not ourselves as wealthy as our parents were, or as we perceived them to be. These are channels inside us that can be opened up.
2. Spiritually, we may hate money.
There is an anti-material streak in most religions. This shows up in dualistic, dichotomous, divisive attitudes about the betterness of spirit over matter. That much, I agree with—but remember that all matter is spirit, first of all. And remember that spirit may be better than matter, but turning away the material world—turning away money—does not by itself make us more spiritual! It makes us prideful, disdainful, and hard to help!
3. Use our imaginations.
Widening and deepening our money channels can be helped by showing a little more imagination, people. How many ways are there to make and receive money? Let me count the ways! If you continuously expect money to show up in one channel, and it doesn’t—change channels! I don’t mean reject the old one. I believe the Universe loves continuity and consistency. I do mean come up with some new channels to play on. Try different approaches to making, earning, investing, asking for, and receiving money.
4. If this last idea comes as an obstacle…
Notice that! And go back to #1 and #2 above, because like me, you probably need to if you can’t imagine new ways of receiving money.
Imagination is one of our most powerful assets; everything started as an idea.
And again, honor your idea by being consistent and continuous with it for a while. Give it a chance. Give it enough time to build up to being an actual channel. Make sure the Universe knows this is a place to pour in money. There is plenty of money out there, make sure it comes “in here” to the channels you’ve chosen.
This is easier to see in the nonprofit sector. As a fundraiser, I often talk of creating “channels” for donations.
In reality, almost all donations from all donors get poured into the same place: the work the nonprofit is doing. But different donors prefer different channels. Some like giving publicly, such as to crowdfunding campaigns. Some like giving privately. Some like giving by mail. Some like giving at events. So I advise my clients to have a channel to receive in each way. Think about, know about, and research the basic ways your donors like to give and create channels that honor those pathways.
A channel is just a pathway. One thing I notice with nonprofits as well as entrepreneurs is that sometimes they create broken pathways. An obstacle. For example, a broken link. A payment portal that no longer works, or no longer even exists. Something that triggers our suspicion, like a claim that is made but obviously not meant…honesty and integrity are worthy channel-builders. If it is hard to make a gift or hard to pay you—make it easy! Make it smooth, and simple and truthful.
5. Gratitude.
Dig into gratitude. If you already write each day in your gratitude journal, write a letter or email to someone you’re grateful to each day for a week, or each week for a month. It can be someone living or not in the body anymore. If you want more, give a gift. To a person or a nonprofit. If you don’t have a gratitude practice, you can certainly start by writing 5 or 10 things each day you’re grateful for. In fact, you could write about one in detail and it would still work very well.
This post was inspired by my soul-colleague Joe Campanella, founder of Peer-Pods. It was helped enormously by the beautiful souls who participated in the live event where I recorded the accompanying video.
For more of my videos about money, click here.
To receive the link to purchase my three-class, in-depth course recording, “Mastering Your Money Flow,” complete the form below. And to receive invitations to my live events and announcements of classes and more, subscribe to my newsletter (different from this blog).
No Comments