By Kathryn Weber
There’s a saying that success is just the accumulation of good habits. It’s true. The more you do to help yourself and to be successful, the more successful – and prosperous – you’ll become. Success and the wealth and acclaim that comes with it isn’t as much a secret as much as it is a habit.
Having a happy home life, successful career, ability to go and buy what you like when you want it, this brings happiness is true wealth. There are many people who have money, but lack wealth. Recently, my husband and I are shopping for a new home. The houses are beautiful, but there is little furniture, or what’s there is of poor quality.
It’s as though the owner’s money went into the homes, but there was no money to furnish the beautiful home with beautiful belongings. Is that a wealthy homeowner? No.
That’s the paradox of wealth. Having money (or a big house or a nice car) doesn’t mean you are wealthy any more than breathing makes you healthy. Having real wealth is about having a beautiful home, but also the ability to furnish it beautifully.
Real wealth means you may have a wonderful car and beautiful home – but you also have accumulated wealth. Accumulated wealth brings security, comfort, and is relaxing.
But bringing money into your life requires healthy wealth habits to help maintain it. I see clients often who say they have plenty of money coming in when I ask them how their financial status is, yet their homes are like leaking ships – and I wonder how long they will stay afloat. You may be at the point in this program that you are thinking you have too much feng shui to do!
I promise you, though, that if you will work at it and build on it, the feng shui you have built will gain momentum and will increase with time — and accumulate. My goal is to help you to develop true wealth – the kind that helps you to relax, feel confident and secure – and have fun with it, too!
If you’ve read the passage “Paradox of Our Age” by the Dalai Lama, you’ll understand the wealth energy that I am trying to impart to you. It’s about true wealth; not just money. Real wealth is the abundant, accumulated resource that’s there for you to use as you wish when you wish, and that keeps your family and security safeguarded.
Money is easy, but simple money can become meaningless when it is only money and not wealth. Creating wealthy habits will have the effect of lifting your personal energy – and that is a powerful attractant to real wealth.
1. Repair broken energy.
Broken energy comes from, well, broken things. When your door scrapes against the threshold, it imbues your home with negative, irrigating energy.
If your dishes are chipped, you are eating off of broken energy. This drains positive wealth energy and makes your house drained and more yin. Our houses must be energized and broken things bring the energy level down — and that affects our prosperity. Keep your clothes, your home, your car and your doors in good working order. What’s broken that is draining your energy?
2. Putting wealth in, not just out.
Too often in our lives, we become accustomed to money flowing in and out of our lives — and not accumulating. The money comes in, the bills get paid, and the money flows right back out again. Energizing your home and life for wealth means putting energy INTO it.
This includes making deposits into your accounts. Get into the habit of putting money in instead of just paying out. This energy builds over time — and so does your bank account. And you’d be surprised how that will make you feel.
Do you even have a retirement or savings account? If so, set up automatic weekly or monthly withdrawals. Or, join Bank of America’s program that rounds off purchases to the nearest dollar and puts the extra amount into a savings account.
Do you buy a large soda or fancy coffee every day? Stop and then put that money into a piggy bank. Even a $1.50 drink each day amounts to $547 at the end of a year. Are you drinking $500’s worth of diet sodas? What’s important is that you see yourself as ACCUMULATING money, not just being a pass-thru for it.
3. Energize your home.
Keep your home energized with fresh paint, lush landscaping. Just like an employer matching your 401K, match your home with an investment in beautifying and updating your surroundings. Unlike a car, money put into a home will be an investment that will pay you back in energy — and if you sell it — in dollars. More importantly, by energizing your home, you magnetize your home for wealth energy.
Landscaping is a very important ingredient because it brings vital dragon energy to the home. Lush flowers, trees and plants are healthy and invigorating and lift the energy of the house.
4. Energize your image.
Many times when someone doesn’t feel good or like they look good, they have a stuffed closet. A closet that’s rammed with shoes and clothes that are outdated will cause you to feel outdated too! If you are ready to “look the part” of a wealthy, happy and abundantly prosperous person, turn to your closet to get rid of the clothing that no longer suits you or is part of an outdated image.
If you have weight to lose, this could be even more important for you! Pare down your closet – including those articles of clothing that you used to fit it but haven’t in a long time. Wealth energy means moving energy and when you are stuck in an old look and outdated image, this can stop the energy flowing to you.
5. Energize your finances.
Get a red wallet and checkbook, put your investment and banking account information and statements in red folders, write checks in red ink. Put bills into blue or black folders so they aren’t energized. Have a small basket to hold bills — and keep it small so your bills stay small. Clean out and organize your financial files and your purse or wallet. Streamline your credit cards so that you don’t have too many, limiting them to three or less. Add grains of sea salt to your wallet to “draw” money, just like sea water will draw soreness away from achy muscles!
6. Believe.
Do you believe you can be wealthy and prosperous? Do you think you deserve it? Do you really FEEL that way or are you just intellectualizing it? It’s so important that you believe you are worthy of being a prosperous person, someone who doesn’t just make a living, but makes a life with the money you earn. Observe your thoughts about wealth and money and see if it’s really not you who is standing in the way of money.
Spend time thinking about your thoughts about money and wealth and ask yourself, what could you do today, right now, that could change your financial picture?
